Central America: To Share the Pain

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"One should be with those who suffer." That was the answer Pope John Paul II gave last week when newsmen aboard his Alitalia DC-10 jet asked him to explain the purpose of his visit to Central America. The remark may have seemed self-evident, but nothing so eloquently expressed why the 62-year-old Pontiff, who had already survived one close brush with death and a second attempt on his life last spring in Portugal, should feel compelled to risk his personal safety and the authority of his office to go on a pilgrimage to the most politically explosive strip of territory in the Western Hemisphere.

During the eight-day journey that began last Wednesday in Costa Rica and that was to take him to Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and Haiti, John Paul was visiting nations torn by insurrection and political change. Each faction on the ideological spectrum would examine his every utterance, hoping to find an endorsement of its political views. But first and foremost John Paul had come as a pastor, offering instruction, strength and solace to his Central American flock of 25 million Roman Catholics.

Even if glimpsed only for a moment above a surging crowd as an instant, solitary figure in white, the Pope wanted to let the faithful know by his presence that he was moved by the grinding poverty and political oppression of the region. He had heard "the heart-rending lament rising from these lands," where over the past five years, civil strife has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people, most of them bystanders in the struggle between left and right. Indeed, the region's conflicts have reaped a grim harvest of martyrs and threatened to rend the church in two in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. For those who were in pain, John Paul brought a message of hope, peace and unity.

As a pastor concerned with the spiritual welfare of the faithful, the Pope had also come to reprove and correct the wayward. He had harsh words for Christians in Nicaragua who have tried to forge a new church compatible with the aims of the avowedly Marxist Sandinista government and rebuked clergy who have neglected their priestly office to serve the state. Angered that no cross was placed at the site of an outdoor Mass in Managua, he deliberately held his own staff, tipped with a cross, high above the heads of Sandinista leaders seated on the platform. As John Paul delivered his homily, he waved the text defiantly in the air, sometimes shouting the words, as if to prove that he would speak his mind no matter what Nicaragua's rulers thought.