Pope leaves troubled Chile

Press, 7 April 1987, Page 10

Pope leaves troubled Chile

NZPA-Reuter Antofagasta, Chile

Pope John Paul II has ended a six-day tour of Chile marred by violent clashes between youths and the police, with a visit to a prison where inmates staged a hunger strike.

The Pope, who has made repeated calls for national conciliation in Chile, a country divided by 13 years of military rule, gave a homily at Antofagasta prison, where 11 inmates accused of politically-related crimes ended their hunger strike last Friday. They are among a group of 350 inmates of prisons around Chile, including a number detained on charges relating to an assassination at-

tempt on President Augusto Pinochet last September, who fasted for up to a month to press for improved conditions. They called off the strike in a gesture marking the papal visit after the intervention of Opposition politicians and human rights figures. The Government did not accede to their demands, which included a recognition of political status. The Pope’s visit has been carefully balanced to reach the divided sections of Chilean society. His support for democracy and condemnation of torture have been accompanied by a firm rejection of political violence and Marxism. Before he left for Argentina, the Pope celebrated the last of five

masses on his eight-city tour of Chile. It was at a mass in Santiago’s central park on Saturday that the worst violence of the tour occurred when hundreds of people were injured as youths hurling stones and sticks clashed with police firing water-cannon and teargas. Three people suffered bullet wounds.

The gas drifted to the platform where the Pope was officiating at the beatification of Chile’s first candidate for sainthood, and several priests raised handkerchiefs to their faces to protect against its effects. A Vatican spokesman said the Pope had repeatedly asked Santiago’s Cardinal Juan Francisco Fresno for news about the health of those injured in

the clashes. Argentina is the last stop on this papal tour. After a day in Buenos Aires, the Pope will leave on a whistle-stop trip through nine other Argentine cities.

During the six-day visit, the Pope is expected to touch on divorce, a controversial issue in Argentina, where liberalising legislation is now being debated. He will also return to the official reason for the three-nation visit that also took in Uruguay . — the celebration of a Vaticanmediated peace treaty signed by Chile and Argentina in 1984 that ended a simmering 100-year-old dispute over islands in the Beagle Channel at the southern tip of the continent.