Religion: The Pope Will Hit the Road

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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 Excélsior 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."