Preaching Peace to Patriots

By Mayo Mohs

Fresh from Britain, the Pope takes Argentina by storm

The jet pilots of the Argentine squadron that sank the British destroyer Coventry last month flew into battle repeating the prayers of the Rosary over the open microphones of their radios. An Argentine antiaircraft gunner in Port Stanley described how he shot down a British Harrier: " 'Holy Mother of God'--and bang, bang, I knocked it down from heaven." A wounded 18-year-old Argentine conscript lay dying this week, but confided to the medic treating him, "I pray to God that I get better soon and go back to fight."

The pious patriotism of the Argentines, reflected in such current stories from the front, is hardly restricted to the military. Father Agustin Luchia Puig, editor of the Roman Catholic magazine Esquiu (named after a 19th century Argentine bishop), declared that "all Argentines, in church and out, believe our cause is just. I think that the good God is content with this faith of ours." One of the country's notably progressive prelates, Archbishop Vicente Faustino Zazpe of Santa Fe, in northern Argentina, last week assailed "the treason of the United States" and the "hopeless hysteria of England," singling out President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as "mediocre" and "short of stature." On the Sunday just before Pope John Paul II was due to arrive in Argentina, Archbishop Antonio Quarracino of Avellaneda delivered a sermon that smacked of spiritual oneupmanship. "The Pope visited England as a duty ... He comes to us because of love."

Thus when John Paul finally stepped from the Alitalia DC-10 jetliner Galileo Galilei last Friday at Buenos Aires' Ezeiza Airport and kissed the ground of Argentina, he faced a delicate diplomatic task. There to greet him, amid a thick crowd of government and church dignitaries, was President Leopoldo Fortunate Galtieri, uniformed but hatless, reverently kneeling to kiss the Pontiffs ring. Later, while the Pope spoke, Galtieri gallantly held an umbrella over him, but the presence of the man who had ordered the invasion of the Falklands did not deter John Paul from hammering yet again at the message of peace and reconciliation he had carried throughout Britain. He prayed for "the peace of Christ upon all victims of both sides," asking his hearers to think "once again about the absurd and always unjust phenomenon of war, whose scenario of death and sorrow could be averted through the means of the negotiating table." He observed that "we are not facing terrifying spectacles such as those of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but each time that we risk man's life, we trigger mechanisms that lead to such catastrophes."

Invoking blessings on the country, John Paul mentioned the casualties of war, the sick and the bereaved, but, to the disappointment of many Argentines, omitted any direct reference to another category of victims: the desaparecidos. The "disappeared ones," variously estimated to number from 6,000 to 24,000, vanished during the military regime's "dirty war" against left-wing terrorism during the late 1970s. The junta, for its part, had returned at least a few beloved ones, if not desaparecidos, to their families, having released 128 prisoners outright and 116 more on parole in an amnesty honoring the papal visit. The government denied that those released were political prisoners, but all had been held without charge at the pleasure of the junta.

Papal fever, in any case, had begun to overshadow political fervor for many Argentines in the hours before the Pope's arrival. The patriotic euphoria of the early weeks of the war was all but submerged in a vast national outpouring of piety and sheer excitement over the Pope's visit, the first ever made by a Pontiff to Argentina.

Just the night before the Pope landed, while his jet was already well into its 16-hour flight from Rome to Argentina, crowds were still celebrating Malvinas Day. But the mood was already shifting from fatherland to Holy Father: a bent old lady fingered her Rosary at Our Lady of Mercy Church in the downtown district of Retire, praying both for the safety of her grandson in Port Stanley and for the Pontiffs safe arrival.

Later, as John Paul moved through the streets of Buenos Aires in his Papamovil, an Indian woman knelt at the curb praying, "Let him hear my sorrow. Let God's light breathe life into the fallen." Reflected one young university student on the Pope's message: "I love my country. Our cause is just. But I love God more than the Malvinas." The feeling was mirrored in less religious reactions: crowds that gathered outside the offices of the daily La Nacion to read the latest war news did not greet last week's announcements of British losses with the jubilation of the early weeks of the conflict.

As John Paul ground through the first day of his exhausting 32-hour visit--first to address Argentine clergy at the capital's Metropolitan Cathedral, later in the morning to meet with other members of the junta at the presidential Casa Rosada--some Argentines sought to add luster to their own causes through the Pope's presence. Most audaciously, ardent followers of the populist policies of the late Dictator Juan Peron wanted to gain political capital from the major papal appearance of the day. That was an afternoon Mass at the venerable basilica of Our Lady of Lujan, the nation's most sacred Marian shrine, 40 miles west of Buenos Aires. The Peronists had distributed leaflets through the capital and other cities with exhortations calling EVERYONE TO LUJAN . . . WELCOME JOHN PAUL II ... THE POPE AND PERON ARE AS ONE GREAT HEART . . . EVITA IS A SAINT. As it turned out, with more than a million devout Argentines packing the square and streets in front of the shrine, the Peronists were lost in the crowd.

Perhaps the frankest moment of the Pope's visit came during his sermon at Lujan, when John Paul declared that he had come to Argentina "as the pilgrim of difficult moments." It was an apt phrase, well-earned during his. trip to Britain and doubly so in Argentina. There was no time--and no maneuvering room--for the diplomatic niceties that helped to give his British trip a less political flavor. While he could and did avoid a visit with Prime Minister Thatcher, who serves as head of government only, he could not make the same distinction with Galtieri, who is both head of state and head of government.

Ironically, the Pope had avoided coming to Argentina earlier, precisely because of a political dispute: the conflicting claims of Argentina and Chile to the Beagle Channel islands and the adjoining strait in the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego. That argument had threatened to erupt into war between the two countries until the claimants agreed to accept papal mediation. According to unofficial reports, the suggested terms of settlement award three islands to Chile and put the surrounding waters under shared sovereignty. Chile has declared itself ready to accept the solution. Argentina has not. Until the Falklands crisis forced a visit as a quid pro quo for the British trip, John Paul was unwilling to set foot in the country until the dispute was settled. Speaking to Argentina's clergy on Friday, the Pope made it clear that his trip was an "exceptional" one, "totally different from a normal apostolic pastoral visit."

Before the Argentine occupation of the Falklands, indeed, John Paul would have encountered a less united church, divided between generally older, more conservative members of the hierarchy who have tolerated or even openly supported the military regime, and a younger group of prelates--perhaps as many as 20 of the country's 80 bishops--who are growing impatient for social change and a swift return to democracy. Archbishop Jaime Francisco de Nevares of Neuquen, in a poor region of Argentina along the Chilean border, is among the most vocal of the new activists. "We have a reputation for being moderate," he says acidly, charging that "Argentine bishops have not spoken out strongly enough against injustice" in the country. "Had we taken a stronger stand, much suffering could have been avoided." What might have worked to curb the excesses of the "dirty war" might also have helped in the Falklands dispute, suggests Nevares. "Had we been given notice of the government's intention to acquire the Malvinas, we might have been able to resolve things in a more peaceful way and avoid war."

As it was, the National Conference of Bishops virtually endorsed the invasion, in a declaration shortly after the seizure, stating that "the nation has affirmed its rights." Some church leaders duly noted that the occupation had initially cost no lives, but at least one new-breed prelate has since attacked that thinking. In a letter sent to his fellow bishops three weeks ago, Archbishop Jorge Novak of Quilmes cited other factors that should have been considered in the decision: "moral, cultural and economic costs that may be irreparable." However courageous the action, wrote Novak, it lacked "wisdom and prudence."

Moreover, progressive churchmen within and outside Argentina complain that the invasion of the Falklands has all but shut off the internal campaigns against violations of human rights. In Brazil, powerful liberals like Paulo Evaristo Cardinal Arns of Sao Paulo have both sheltered Argentine refugees and long inveighed against the human rights abuses that produced them. Now, says one of Arns' closest advisers, Presbyterian Clergyman James Wright, "the whole concept of national sovereignty has taken precedence over everything else." Wright points out that some of the famed Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have come to think that it is unpatriotic to continue their demands for an accounting of the desaparecidos. Wright even grumbles that Nobel Peace Prizewinner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who heads Argentina's outspoken Peace and Justice Commission, "has gone in for this flag waving." Al though Esquivel's stance has not been strident, he has denounced "British aggression and colonialism, which endanger our people and the peace of the world."

John Paul seems to want to heal the split between left and right in the Latin American churches. Turning his peace making theme to his confreres, he lectured the assembled Argentine clergy Friday morning on the need for "reconciliation in the interior of the church and society, particularly in these delicate moments that make such reconciliation obligatory and urgent." On Saturday, addressing a much larger conclave that encompassed all of Argentina's bishops and the presidents of 30 Latin American bishops' conferences, he again emphasized the church's healing role, urging his listeners to work against "the fractures and divisions, hatred and discord that constantly break the unity of peace. You must not try to achieve this through politics, but with the humble and convincing word of the Gospel."

With that, the Pontiff was off again through the Buenos Aires streets jammed with worshipful crowds waving Argentine and Vatican flags (some of them next to bullet-torn Union Jacks) and shouting the name that has become familiar in so many languages: "Juan Pablo! Juan Pablo!" Waiting for him in and around the capital's Palermo Park were one and a half million Argentines, many of whom had kept vigil through the night. There the Pope concelebrated Mass with the 120 bishops and Cardinals who had gathered from around the country and the hemisphere, and sounded again in his sermon his drumbeat call for peace. "Do not allow hatred to rot your generous energies and the capacity for agreement which you all carry inside you," he pleaded. "Join hands in a chain of union stronger than a chain of war."

As John Paul boarded his jetliner for the homeward flight Saturday afternoon, the reports of new righting in the Falk lands shed gloom over his departure. But he had kept his promise to the Argentines, as he had to the British, telling them both how futile it all was. As the wounded and the coffins came home, many of his listeners had agreed. In Port Stanley, however, the tragic futility had triumphed. triumphed . -- By Mayo Mohs. Reported by James Wilde/Buenos Aires and Wilton Wynn with the Pope

With reporting by James Wilde/Buenos Aires, Wilton Wynn Pope

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