"Evil Is Never a Road to Good!"

By Richard N. Ostling

Throughout his twelve-day tour of Latin America, Pope John Paul II hewed to a delicately balanced, catechistic course. In homily after homily he warned his audiences against the seductive appeal of liberation theology, which in its more radical forms filters the Christian message through a Marxist- influenced social analysis of the class struggle. In a teeming Lima slum last week, the Pontiff declared that the church seeks "authentic liberation" through moral teaching that will set in motion forces to bring about change. But, he said, the church has a limited role in solving "concrete problems." If that was less than progressive priests and nuns would have liked, they were nonetheless cheered by the Pope's fervent advocacy of political and economic justice for the poor.

Certainly the pilgrim Pope had enjoyed a personal triumph as he addressed millions of listeners in 17 cities. One of the founding fathers of liberation theology, Peruvian Priest Gustavo Gutierrez, applauded John Paul's impact upon his country's poor. "It will raise their self-confidence and their consciousness of their own problems," he said. "The people have lived these days like a celebration." Peru was the Pope's last South American stop, and the spectacular settings were hardly more dramatic than his words. After speaking at the Incan fortress of Sacsahuaman to 80,000 Indians, Pope John Paul chose the impoverished region surrounding Ayacucho to make his boldest political gesture since his visit to Poland in 1983. The area has been terrorized for four years by the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas. Some 4,000 people have been killed, and human rights groups claim that 1,000 more have "disappeared" at the hands of government security forces. That heedless slaughter provoked the Pope last week.

"The men who put their faith in armed struggle . . . have allowed themselves to be tricked by false ideologies," he said, showing flashes of anger. "Evil is never a road to good! . . . Violence inexorably engenders new forms of oppression and slavery, ordinarily more grave than those which it pretends to liberate . . . I ask you, then, in the name of God: Change your course!" The audience of 40,000 (no ponchos were allowed for fear of concealed weapons) chanted, "Ayacucho wants peace." The Pope, a bishop said later, seemed to be weeping.

The next night, minutes after the Pope's plane landed outside Lima, bombs apparently planted by Shining Path exploded at four electricity towers, plunging sectors of the capital into darkness; a large hammer-and-sickle was set ablaze on a nearby hillside. The Pope was never endangered, but the guerrillas had unintentionally summarized the point of his antiterrorist message. In Lima, when the Pope greeted an informal crowd that had gathered in a blacked-out street, a good-natured chant went up: "John Paul is light."

With reporting by Gavin Scott/ Lima and Roberto Suro with the Pope