"To Share the Pain"

By John Kohan

"One should be with those who suffer." That was the answer Pope John Paul II gave last week when newsmen aboard his Alitalia DC-10 jet asked him to explain the purpose of his visit to Central America. The remark may have seemed self-evident, but nothing so eloquently expressed why the 62-year-old Pontiff, who had already survived one close brush with death and a second attempt on his life last spring in Portugal, should feel compelled to risk his personal safety and the authority of his office to go on a pilgrimage to the most politically explosive strip of territory in the Western Hemisphere.

During the eight-day journey that began last Wednesday in Costa Rica and that was to take him to Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and Haiti, John Paul was visiting nations torn by insurrection and political change. Each faction on the ideological spectrum would examine his every utterance, hoping to find an endorsement of its political views. But first and foremost John Paul had come as a pastor, offering instruction, strength and solace to his Central American flock of 25 million Roman Catholics.

Even if glimpsed only for a moment above a surging crowd as an instant, solitary figure in white, the Pope wanted to let the faithful know by his presence that he was moved by the grinding poverty and political oppression of the region. He had heard "the heart-rending lament rising from these lands," where over the past five years, civil strife has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people, most of them bystanders in the struggle between left and right. Indeed, the region's conflicts have reaped a grim harvest of martyrs and threatened to rend the church in two in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. For those who were in pain, John Paul brought a message of hope, peace and unity.

As a pastor concerned with the spiritual welfare of the faithful, the Pope had also come to reprove and correct the wayward. He had harsh words for Christians in Nicaragua who have tried to forge a new church compatible with the aims of the avowedly Marxist Sandinista government and rebuked clergy who have neglected their priestly office to serve the state. Angered that no cross was placed at the site of an outdoor Mass in Managua, he deliberately held his own staff, tipped with a cross, high above the heads of Sandinista leaders seated on the platform. As John Paul delivered his homily, he waved the text defiantly in the air, sometimes shouting the words, as if to prove that he would speak his mind no matter what Nicaragua's rulers thought.

There were other reminders last week of the difficult political obstacles the Pope had to overcome if his spiritual mission was to succeed. John Paul's Guatemala stop, scheduled for Monday, ran into trouble when President Efrain Rios Montt ordered the execution of six suspected terrorists, ignoring a last-minute papal plea for clemency. In a message to Guatemalan Bishop Prospero Pernados del Barrio, John Paul confirmed that he still planned to visit Guatemala but condemned the executions. Said the Pope: "I cannot fail to think with immense pain of the recent executions that have taken place in your nation and to invoke divine mercy on all these deceased of this country of Central America, and in particular for those who have suffered a violent death." He hoped that his visit would help promote "respect for the rights of the person."

The Pope's greatest challenge was El Salvador, where guerrillas have in recent weeks made gains in their struggle against the conservative, U.S.-supported government. While the Pontiff prepared for his pilgrimage of peace, the Reagan Administration caused a political storm at home by arguing intensely that $60 million in additional military aid was needed in El Salvador (see following story).

No other country so embodies the suffering of Central America as El Salvador, whose very name in Spanish invokes the Saviour. Three years of civil war have fragmented the church there into three camps. Some priests support the U.S.-backed regime, others back the leftist insurgents, while the majority are caught somewhere in between. Hoping to bring unity into the Salvadoran church hierarchy, John Paul announced on the eve of his trip that he had appointed acting Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, 59, as the successor to the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who had been ruthlessly shot down, presumably by fanatic rightists, while saying a Mass in 1980. Since Rivera y Damas has consistently called for a national "dialogue" to end the bloodshed, his selection put the Pope squarely behind the idea of a negotiated settlement between the Salvadoran government and the guerrillas, a position Washington strenuously opposes.

The Pope's visit did offer Salvadorans the promise, at least, of a day without gunfire. A spokesman for the five-member coalition of Marxist-led guerrillas announced at a Mexico City press conference that they planned to honor John Paul's pilgrimage with a cease-fire "to create conditions favorable to the message he will bring." The government, in response, said that military forces would not shoot unless they were fired upon. But the truce would soon end. Exiled Salvadoran Leader Ruben Zamora said that insurgents had received better weapons and would step up activities once the Pope left El Salvador.

Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd at Mass in San Salvador last Sunday, John Paul made an urgent plea for peace and reconciliation. Said he: "The dialogue which the church seeks is not a tactical truce called to fortify positions in order to pursue the struggle but a sincere effort to respond to the search for an accord." As the Pope passed the city's cathedral, he made a surprise visit to the tomb of Archbishop Romero and praised his example. "I would hope that his memory be always respected," he emphasized, "and that no ideological interest would try to exploit his sacrifice as pastor leading his flock."

The Pope began his hazardous and challenging journey in Costa Rica, an enclave of sanity and democracy that served as a base for visits to Nicaragua, Panama and El Salvador. John Paul clearly hoped that his words in this open society would resonate throughout the region. After emerging from his plane at Juan Santamaria International Airport to the delighted shrieks of hundreds of schoolchildren, he knelt to kiss the ground in his now traditional gesture of blessing. Then, almost immediately, he got down to tough business. Instead of offering a perfunctory response to the welcoming address by Costa Rican President Luis Alberto Monge, the Pontiff used the occasion to set forth the major themes of his pilgrimage.

"I speak of peace, concord and hope," said John Paul, his white cape billowing in a brisk wind. Speaking Spanish as he did throughout Central America, he told the audience assembled on the tarmac that he had come "to share the pain" of Central America and that he hoped to provide a voice for the searing images of daily life, for "the tears or deaths of children, the anguish of the elderly, of the mother who loses her children, of the long lines of orphans, of those many thousands of refugees, exiles or displaced persons searching for a home, of the poor with neither home nor work."

John Paul reaffirmed his oft-stated view that it was the church's mission to right social wrongs, but only according to Christian principles. As on past pilgrimages in the developing world, he rejected the ideologies of both left and right. Instead, he called upon Christians to seek change in society "without resorting to violence or to collectivist systems that can prove no less oppressive to the dignity of man than pure economic capitalism." In a cut at both U.S. and Soviet proxy involvement in the region, particularly in El Salvador and Nicaragua, he stressed that it was important for each nation to "confront problems in a sincere dialogue, without foreign influence."

Even though it was the Lenten season, the papal arrival seemed to revive the spirit of carnival in Costa Rica. Before dawn, crowds of well-wishers hoping to catch a glimpse of John Paul staked out spots on grassy embankments along the way to San Jose. Within the capital, Costa Ricans who could not find their high-sounding sidewalks strained to watch from office windows and balconies. Others climbed onto pedestrian overpasses decked for the occasion with wreaths of yellow and white carnations, the papal colors. Businesses shut down for a two-day holiday, but some could not resist exploiting the commercial opportunities afforded by the visit. As one billboard in downtown San Jose brazenly proclaimed, YOUR DAILY BREAD WITH JOHN PAUL II AND SCHMIDT'S BAKERY.

As the Pope passed, shielded behind bulletproof glass atop a specially converted truck, surging crowds broke through the police cordon. Swarming well-wishers ran alongside the Popemobile, exuberantly pounding its sides and shouting greetings to the waving Pontiff, bringing the motorcade virtually to a halt. Flower tributes fell so thick and fast that at one point the driver tried in vain to turn on his windshield wipers. All the while, a surveillance helicopter on loan from the Panamanian Air Force nervously bobbed and dipped above, as John Paul continued his slow, if not stately, procession to Costa Rica's only seminary, where he would address a gathering of 66 Central American bishops.

Seated beneath a giant crucifix within the seminary's modest chapel, John Paul amplified the comments he had made at the airport and described the role that the Central American clergy should play in seeking social justice and defending human rights. Stressing the need for unity, he warned the bishops, who represented every country in the region, not to abandon their priestly duties in order to engage in politics. Said John Paul: "Not in the capacity of technicians or politicians may you as bishops carry out your missions, but in the capacity of pastors." He urged them "to preach with courage all the social implications of the Christian situation." The message was not new, but it took on a special edge as the Pontiff prepared to visit Nicaragua, where many in the Catholic clergy have enthusiastically welcomed the Sandinista revolution and taken jobs in the government.

John Paul has often said that it is the laity, not the clergy, that must seek social change by political means. As he surveyed a crowd of 500,000 people gathered for an open-air Mass in San Jose's La Sabana park, the Pope reminded them that the church "exhorts us to busy ourselves, not only with the things of the spirit but also with the realities of this world and the human society of which we are a part." He repeated the message to Costa Rican youth at the National Stadium, urging them to struggle against violence. Said the Pope: "How many tears, how much blood has been shed because of violence, the fruit of hatred and egoism." Then, to make sure that his demands for peace and social justice were seen not just as high-sounding words, he called on the judges of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has its headquarters in San Jose, to find a better means for verifying human rights abuse and, if all else failed, to use sanctions against chronic offenders.

The Pontiff seemed to shoulder the many burdens of the troubled region. He was visibly moved during a visit to youthful patients in the cancer ward of San Jose's National Children's Hospital. As he pinched the cheeks and tousled the hair of one young boy, the mother began to moan softly , "Touch my son, touch my son." But the Pope would see more of the ravages of suffering once his trip took him out of relatively stable Costa Rica.

Already during the Mass in San Jose, the Pope gleaned hints of the difficulties he would face the next day in Nicaragua, where both the church and its followers are deeply divided over the policies of a revolutionary government. A group of 300 Nicaraguan exiles kept a silent vigil on a grassy knoll, holding up banners denouncing the Sandinista regime. Said one: IN NICARAGUA RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION EXISTS! Another, referring to harassment of early Christians in Rome, read: NO CATACOMBS IN NICARAGUA! Though Nicaragua's Catholic leaders supported the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, moderate clerics have now grown wary of Sandinista-supported efforts to meld Christianity with Marxist ideology.

Even the last-minute preparations for the Pope's arrival in Nicaragua turned into a political tug-of-war between church hierarchy and state. Managua's Archbishop Miguel Obando y Brando, an outspoken critic of the regime, complained that the Sandinista government's plans to use publicly-owned transportation to shuttle Nicaraguans to sites along the papal route were an attempt to control who would be able to see John Paul. Some parish priests urged the faithful to ignore government timetables determining when they could leave for the Mass and instead to form their own religious processions.

Sandinista officials dismissed the complaints, pointing out that the plans to "mobilize" the country's Christians had been worked out in joint committees that included local bishops and Sandinista leaders. There were other signs on the eve of the Pope's arrival that the government felt it could only benefit from a successful visit. State-controlled television provided full and uncensored coverage of John Paul's stay in Costa Rica. Workers were given an extended weekend to give them time to see the Pope. Even the Sandinista workers' headquarters in downtown Managua was draped with a red-and-black banner welcoming John Paul with "revolutionary joy."

But immediately upon his arrival at Managua's Augusto Cesar Sandino Airport, the Pope was plunged into national politics. While the sunburned Pontiff stood in the blazing heat for an airport welcoming ceremony, Sandinista junta Coordinator Daniel Ortega Saavedra delivered a 25-minute greeting, in which he blasted U.S. foreign policy and warned that "the footsteps of interventionist boots echo threateningly in the White House and the Pentagon." He told the Pope that the Nicaraguan people were "martyred and crucified every day, and we demand solidarity with right on our side." Ortega also went out of his way to tell the Pope that "Christian patriots and revolutionaries are an integral part of the popular Sandinista revolution." In response the Pontiff noted that he also would do his part to end "the suffering of innocent people in this part of the world."

The airport ceremony forced John Paul to deal head-on with the nettlesome issue of Nicaraguan priests who hold government posts in defiance of his wishes. Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a Maryknoll priest, was conveniently out of the country, attending a meeting of the nonaligned nations in New Delhi, when the Pope arrived. But Minister of Culture Ernesto Cardenal Martinez, a priest, was in the official receiving line along with other government ministers. He was wearing his typical rustic white cotton shirt, baggy blue work pants and a black beret. As the Pontiff approached, Cardenal whipped off his beret and dropped to his knees to kiss the papal ring. But the Pope appeared to withhold his hand. Wagging his finger at Cardenal, John Paul gave him a public scolding that television cameras carried around the world. The Pope told Cardenal: "You must straighten out your position with the church."

In a sermon to 500,000 in Managua's vast Plaza 19 de Julio, the Pope left little doubt about where he stood in the church-state dispute. As a poster gallery of Nicaraguan revolutionary heroes kept silent watch, John Paul exhorted priests to obey their bishops and to preserve the unity of the church. It was a clear show of support for Archbishop Obando y Bravo. In tones that must have echoed strangely from the same platform Fidel Castro had once used to praise the Sandinistas, the Pope condemned the "popular church," a grassroots movement in Nicaragua committed to revolution. He referred to a letter he had written to Nicaraguan bishops last June, and said that it was "absurd and dangerous" to try to form an alternate church. Christian unity was threatened, he said, when traditional teachings were challenged by "earthly considerations, unacceptable ideological compromises and temporal options, including a conception of the church that replaces the true one."

John Paul actually had launched his counterattack earlier in the day, while visiting Nicaragua's second largest city Leon (pop. 92,000). In a speech to an audience consisting mainly of campesinos, the Pope challenged a new law on education that favored secular schooling. Instead, John Paul championed the right of all to receive a Christian education. He also called on Christians to examine the teachings of the church in their search for social justice. Said the Pope, in a thinly veiled attack on Marxist-oriented "liberation theologians": "It is not necessary to hold alien ideologies in order to love and defend man. You can find in the center of the [Christian] message the teaching which calls for commitment to human dignity." Christian doctrine, he declared, teaches that man "is not reducible to a mere instrument of production, nor an agent of political or social powers."

If the Pope's spirited defense of the traditional church heartened Archbishop Obando y Bravo, it was not well-received by Sandinista supporters. During the Mass in Managua, groups of pro-Sandinista youths repeatedly interrupted John Paul's homily with shouts of "Power to the people!" and "We want peace!" John Paul angrily shouted back, "Silence!" But the disruptive chanting only grew louder, amplified by a bullhorn. Finally, raising his voice so that he could be heard above the din, he cried, "The church is the first to favor peace." Later, the Pope interjected a political note of his own by referring to the Miskito indians, who make up some 4% of Nicaragua's population of 2.7 million and straddle the Nicaraguan-Honduran border. Beginning in mid-December 1981 the government, suspecting the Indians of aiding anti-Sandinista guerrillas based in Honduras, forcibly moved the Miskitos some 50 miles from the Honduran border. "I love the Miskitos because they are human beings," the Pope said. Switching to the Miskito language, he added: "Miskito power."

The shouting match suggested that the papal visit may have exacerbated rather than healed the division in the Nicaraguan church. For Sandinista supporters, John Paul seemed to dash all hope of proving that, as a popular Sandinista slogan phrased it, "Christianity and revolution are not in contradiction." Said a worried Maryknoll missionary: "He is making the church commit suicide." A Jesuit who supports the Sandinistas was more defiant. Said he: "It was not the government that broke with the church. It was the church that broke with the government. It was a declaration of war. The Pope doesn't realize the damage he has done here." Supporters of the Archbishop disagreed, arguing that the Pope had strengthened the resolve of Christians who felt threatened by Sandinista efforts to promote a rival church.

The reception that awaited the Pope in Panama contrasted sharply with that in Nicaragua. As cheering schoolchildren waved pompons, Panamanian President Ricardo de la Espriella proclaimed the Pontiffs visit a "joyous fiesta of faith." He assured the smiling Pope that "through God's generosity we do not suffer from the extremes that afflict much of the rest of this region." In his sermon to 300,000 people attending Mass at Albrook Air Force Base in the former U.S. Canal Zone, John Paul turned his attention from war and peace to personal morality. While Panamanians listened in the sweltering 90DEG F heat, the Pope reaffirmed his opposition to artificial methods of birth control and denounced divorce as something "against the will of God." He picked up the theme of social justice later in the day, urging some 40,000 campesinos to "avoid the temptation of violence and selfish class struggle" to improve their living conditions.

In Guatemala, John Paul is scheduled to meet with President Rios Montt, a fervent, born-again Protestant who represents a new wave of Protestant evangelism that is eroding the Catholic Church's traditional supremacy in Guatemala. Although church leaders give Rios Montt credit for bringing a rare measure of honesty to the country's government, his brutal crackdown on insurgents has drawn deserved fire from the Catholic hierarchy. Some Catholic leaders saw his decision to proceed with the six executions on the eve of the papal visit as a deliberate affront to the Vatican. Warned the apostolic nuncio to Guatemala City: "The deplorable incident which took place so near to the projected visit of Pope John Paul II is considered by the Holy See as incredible for its possible grave repercussions at the world and national levels."

The Pope will also spend a day in Honduras, a country that is largely free of domestic violence but is reportedly being used as a staging area for U.S.-supported counterrevolutionary attacks against Nicaragua. One of the Honduran church's problems is its serious shortage of priests. During his visit, John Paul is expected to pay tribute to lay leaders, so-called Delegates of the World, who have helped to fill the gap by organizing rural Bible-study groups. The Pope will also make a brief stopover in Belize, where, in a reversal of the trend in Guatemala, Protestants have yielded their longtime superiority in numbers and political influence to Catholics.

On his way back to Rome, the Pope will stop for a day in Haiti to address the fourth Latin American Bishops Conference. John Paul will not have to look far to see examples of the poverty and tyranny that he wants the church to oppose with all its moral might. Long fearful of government repression, the church hierarchy in Haiti issued a bold challenge to President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier's dictatorship in a pastoral letter read from pulpits last January. Among other things, it called on all believers to "pray to the Lord so he can free our country from torture."

To ease the suffering he had seen and would see during his Central American pilgrimage, John Paul offered his personal presence, his example, his courage. His words were those of comfort, hope, peace -- and on occasion rebuke. Some received his message with joy. Others rejected it with bitterness. But all, if only for a moment, stopped to listen. Said Costa Rican Archbishop Roman Arrieta Villalobos: "I think the word of the Pope is something indescribable, a force that I cannot explain in human terms. He is a man without armed legions, without cannons or machine guns. His force is the truth."

-- By John Kohan.

Reported by Bernard Diederich/ Managua, Timothy Loughran/ San Salvador and Wilton Wynn with the Pope

With reporting by Bernard Diederich, Timothy Loughran, Wilton Wynn This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.