The Pope Will Hit the Road

John Paul II plans venturesome trips to Mexico and Poland

Even before his election, it was obvious that the future Pope John Paul II possessed formidable political skills. As Karol Cardinal Wojtyla of Cracow, he displayed a rhetorical power and disciplined intelligence that made him a man to be reckoned with by the Communist rulers of his native Poland, and a humility and charm that endeared him to the people. The unanswered question was how willing he would be to test these gifts on the world stage. As 1979 began, he seemed quite willing indeed. In planning his first two foreign trips, to Mexico later this month and to Poland in the spring, he chose countries whose populations are overwhelmingly Catholic but whose governments have been, for very different reasons, notoriously anticlerical.

His decision to go to Mexico on his first sortie abroad was singularly bold, since the history of church-state relations there is riddled with conflict and bloodshed. For three centuries, the church was an arm of the Spanish Crown and a reactionary opponent of independence. The colonial yoke was finally sloughed in 1821, and under the constitutions of 1857 and 1917, all church property was seized, monastic orders were prohibited, and each state was empowered to determine how many clergymen could serve in its territory. Though the antagonisms are less virulent today, any government official who enters a church to worship still does so at the risk of ruining his career. A cartoon in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior last week captured the country's schizophrenia: a government bureaucrat frowns at news of the Pope's visit, then when alone, jumps for joy with his rosary beads in hand.

Although 92% Catholic, Mexico lacks formal diplomatic ties with the Vatican, and the Pope will come without an official government invitation. Nonetheless, the government will accord him VIP treatment and heavy security. After a possible stopover in the Dominican Republic, John Paul II is due to arrive in Mexico City on Jan. 26 for a visit to the nearby shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The next day he will proceed to Puebla, 65 miles to the southeast, for the opening of a conference of Latin American bishops. During his five-day stay the Pope may also offer a "People's Mass" at Aztec Stadium (capacity: 100,000) in Mexico City.

The theme of the Puebla conference, "Evangelization in the Present and Future of Latin America," sounds innocuous but may well produce controversy. Ten years ago, a similar conference of bishops passed a human rights resolution that aligned the church with the poor and dispossessed. Tradition-minded churchmen complain that this fueled the "theology of liberation" that has given Catholicism a Marxist hue in Latin America.

The Pope could sidestep this touchy issue by avoiding Puebla, but he has evidently never doubted the need to attend. He was guided in part by his interest in human rights and in part by the fact that some 300 million of the world's 700 million Catholics live in the region. As he observed in his Christmas address to the College of Cardinals: "Some say that the future of the church will be decided in Latin America, and there is some truth in that."

What impact the Pontiff will have on the dispute between "progressives" and "conservatives" is a source of avid speculation. Like progressives in Latin America, he considers himself a social activist and a friend of the downtrodden. But he worries about the degree of political involvement among "progressive" priests there, and as an implacable antiCommunist, he must privately deplore their Marxist tilt. His visit, warns an activist priest, "could be a disaster for liberation-theology supporters and the rest of the progressives." Meanwhile Mexican politicians are fretting over the Pontiffs reception. "We have had a 70% abstention rate in municipal elections this year," says an official of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional. "The Pope could turn out over a million Mexicans and make us look silly."

If John Paul's trip to Mexico is touchy, it may prove a mere warmup for his first return to Poland since becoming Pope. If the government approves, the visit to Poland will probably come in May, to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Stanislaw. Vatican sources speculate that the Pope may want to prepare further for that homecoming by sandwiching in another trip, conceivably to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, in France.

As if to warn John Paul II against roiling domestic waters, Polish authorities censored the Pontiffs Christmas message to his Cracow diocese. Blue-penciled were several sections referring to St. Stanislaw, who was murdered by King Boleslaw II for protesting the monarch's cruelty and repression of his subjects. The censors evidently were worried that Poles might draw unflattering, present-day parallels.

Word of the deletions spread quickly, outraging Poles and embarrassing government officials. The regime lamely suggested a low-level censor had been guilty of excessive zeal. Though the uncensored text did not appear in either the official or religious press, it was read from pulpits throughout the Pope's home diocese of Cracow. Polish church leaders shrewdly capitalized on the gaffe by remaining officially silent. No amount of excoriation could have been as effective as the regime's own inept handling of the situation; what is more, a public fight might have jeopardized the Pope's trip.

An official invitation almost surely will be extended. As things stand now, the government has no way to block the visit short of an arbitrary refusal that would bring international ridicule. Like Mexico, the devout country (95% of Poland's 35 million inhabitants are Catholic) would give any Pope a warm reception. For a native son, the crowds will be delirious and will far outstrip any stage-managed welcome in the past for Polish Party Chief Edward Gierek or even Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev. But this is probably something that political leaders in Poland, and many other countries, are going to have to get used to. -

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