Bombay's Spiritual Spectacular

This week Paul VI will add 8,000 miles to his record as the most travel-minded Pope of history by flying from Rome to Bombay for Roman Catholicism's 38th Eucharistic Congress. The Pope's four-day visit to India is intended to symbolize his concern for the mission church, and for Catholicism's witness to the non-Christian world.

Eucharistic Congresses have been held periodically since 1881 all over the world to demonstrate the unity of

Catholicism and to worship the "Real Presence" of Christ in the Eucharist, the bread and wine of Communion.

More than 100,000 Catholics, including 14 cardinals and 300 bishops, are expected to attend this spiritual spectacular. On the program are Masses in various rites, consecration by the Pope of six new bishops from five continents, and an Indian ballet on "The Eucharist and the New Man," with 1,500 dancers and musicians. The congress will also discuss how the church can ease world problems, particularly poverty, hunger and overpopulation. The nine-day congress will cost upwards of $1,000,000.

Portuguese Anger. Not everyone is as pleased by the congress as are India's 6,200,000 Roman Catholics. Although President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri will greet the Pope in Bombay, many Indian officials are miffed that Paul refused to visit New Delhi. The papal trip also cuts no ice with Portugal, which has never forgiven India for seizing its old colony of Goa in 1961. In honor of the Bom bay congress, Goa is exposing for 44 days of veneration its most famous relic, the mummified body of the 16th century Jesuit Missionary St. Francis Xavier-minus one toe that was bitten off by an overzealous worshiper in 1859 and part of one arm, which was shipped to Rome for veneration in 1615. So outraged was the government of Portugal by news of the papal visit that it forbade the country's newspapers and magazines to mention it.

Portuguese anger is mild compared to that of some right-wing Hindu groups, which look upon the congress as a colonialist plot to destroy the culture of India. There are blunt posters on the streets of Bombay warning that "Christianity is a danger to Hinduism." Indian officials minimized the threat to the Pope, but put a number of Hindu fanatics in protective custody and strengthened the 16,000-man Bombay police force with 3,000 troops from the Maharashtra state police.

Tickets & Traffic Jams. Construction work for the congress has run behind schedule, partly because of the planners' general lack of organization, partly because of last-minute changes inspired by the Pope's decision in late September to attend. In anticipation of the flood of visitors, food prices have risen 10% within the past month.

Racketeers have done an impressive business selling counterfeit tickets. With more than 20,000 extra cars in town--including the Pope's white Lincoln Continental, given him by an alumnus of Notre Dame--Bombay police are resigned to the prospect of monstrous traffic jams. As it happens, almost every major highway in the city is clogged with construction projects. There is perhaps some unintended irony in the pronouncement by Bombay's Valerian Cardinal Gracias that the Pope's visit is "a spiritual pilgrimage in keeping with the best spiritual traditions of India."

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