Into the Central American Volcano

By Richard N. Ostllng

Pope John Paul II embarks on his riskiest pilgrimage

He has journeyed to Poland to bolster the spirits of his countrymen in the face of Communist oppression. He has visited Britain and Argentina while they were at war with each other. Before the leaders of Brazil and the Philippines he has decried violations of human rights. Within earshot of the Northern Ireland border he has denounced terrorism. But none of Pope John Paul II's 16 previous foreign tours was as perilous, in terms of either church politics or of his own physical safety, as the one he begins this week.

The Pope will set off on a visit to all seven countries of Central America as well as to the Caribbean nation of Haiti in an eight-day 18,000-mile journey. In many respects, the region resembles its characteristic topographic feature: Central America is a seething volcano of violence, revolution and poverty. The church there is weighted with bishops who at times have supported oppressive ruling establishments, a rank-and-file clergy that often backs revolutionary change and the threat of competition from growing Protestant evangelism.

John Paul's bold and crucial pilgrimage begins Wednesday in relatively placid Costa Rica, the base from which he will make hops to three other nations. One will be Nicaragua, which is ruled by a Marxist-dominated government in which several priests hold high positions despite papal displeasure. John Paul will visit Panama and El Salvador, the first time a modern Pope has traveled to a nation in the throes of an all-out civil war. Then he moves on to Guatemala, where he will meet General Efrain Rios Montt, an eccentric born-again Protestant whose regime is accused of anti-Catholic bias as well as the murder of a large number of Indian civilians. After a day trip to Honduras, the Pope will fly from Guatemala to Haiti, making a six-hour stop in Belize. In the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, he will open the quadrennial assembly of the Latin American Bishops' Conference (CELAM).

John Paul will follow a similar schedule at each stop. He will be greeted at the airport by government officials and later will meet privately with the head of state. The high point of each visit will be an open-air Mass on a site large enough to hold crowds in the hundreds of thousands. The Pope has also scheduled meetings with the bishops of every national church and plans to address smaller groups representing a cross section of the faithful, from nuns to campesinos.

Extraordinary preparations are already under way for the historic visit. Guatemala's government is erecting a two-story steel cross that will remain permanently at the site of a papal rally in the Campo de Marte stadium. Hundreds of people plan to stay up the night before his arrival laying a multicolored carpet of sawdust and pine needles, a tradition during Holy Week, that will cover the six-mile path of the Pope's motorcade. Street vendors in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa are hawking posters, bumper stickers, buttons and records of a jingle that has become the theme song for the visit.

Despite the festive mood, Vatican security experts are concerned about the Pope's safety. Since the late 1970s, at least 24 bishops, priests and nuns have been murdered in Central America, mostly by right-wing death squads. But the Pope's own brush with death in St. Peter's Square in May 1981 appears to have steeled his determination to make the trip. John Paul, says a close adviser at the Vatican, "looks like a man in a hurry." He seems driven to reach people, especially in his church's most turbulent provinces, building morale and disseminating hope.

Ever since the 1968 CELAM conference in Medellin, Colombia, the Latin American hierarchy has recognized that the church must identify with the impoverished masses rather than the elite. John Paul is expected during the trip to address the issue of how the church must carry out this mission. He will try to reinforce the social policy that he originally outlined on his pilgrimage to Mexico in 1979, namely that priests ought to confine themselves to religious work and leave partisan political activity to the laity. He believes that bishops, priests and the entire church are called by God to preach the dignity and human rights of each individual and to champion the economic interests of the poor. In seeking justice, the Pope has insisted, Catholics cannot accept the ideology or methods of Marxism. That is an implicit rebuttal of Latin America's "liberation theology," which mixes Marxist analysis of the class struggle with Christian teaching in advocating social change.

John Paul is convinced that Catholicism must be united in its social outlook. Yet his Latin American flock is split into at least three factions: the traditionalist right wing, the reform-minded middle and the radical to revolutionary left. Exacerbating the division is a desperate shortage of local clergy, as well as inroads by well-staffed, well-financed Protestant missions. All this, combined with incessant political turmoil and dismaying human deprivation, presents the Catholic Church with a daunting task in each of the nations the Pope is visiting. Three major trouble stops:

> Nicaragua will present the Pope with his most difficult diplomatic challenge in the region. The 1979 overthrow of Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle by the leftist Sandinistas was the first popular revolution in the region to have been supported openly by a country's Catholic bishops before it had succeeded. Since then numerous priests, nuns and foreign missionaries have become involved in government programs, and Nicaragua has been heralded as a laboratory for the Christian-Marxist fusion preached by liberation theologians. But other church leaders, notably Managua's Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo, 57, have openly criticized the Sandinistas' suppression of opposition groups, their harassment of moderate clergymen and the forcible relocation of some 8,000 Miskito Indians suspected of aiding anti-Sandinista guerrillas based in Honduras.

The split is mirrored by a similar division among the faithful. The Sandinistas draw Catholic support from "base communities," church-sponsored discussion groups that emphasize political consciousness-raising, as well as Christian student university groups and those intellectuals who espouse liberation theology. In reaction, the bishops have created their own network of "City of God" clubs. There is even an anti-Sandinista Virgin. Townspeople in Cuapa say that in 1980 Mary appeared to a villager to show her displeasure with the regime and to ask for prayers for the Archbishop.

Under the Vatican's code of canon law, priests can hold government jobs if they have received permission from their local bishop. Two priests have prominent positions in the Nicaraguan Cabinet, Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann of the U.S. Maryknoll Society, and Culture Minister Ernesto Cardenal, a secular priest and noted poet. Four others hold high government posts. But in 1981 Nicaragua's bishops withdrew their approval. A truce was arranged: the priests would remain in office, but they would have to wear civilian clothes when carrying out official duties and not perform religious functions. However, the revised code of canon law, which will go into effect next November, forbids all clerics "to assume public office that involves sharing in the exercise of civil power." John Paul has made it clear that he would like to see priests out of the Nicaraguan government as soon as possible.

> War-torn El Salvador poses the greatest security problems for the Pope. The government has turned down the Vatican's call for a cease-fire while John Paul is in the country. As it is, the Pope will have to make peace within the church. Conservative supporters of the government fear that he is coming to make a plea for "dialogue" with the rebels, while some proponents of liberation theology see the Pontiff as a friend of the ruling "oligarchy." Caught in the middle is Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, the temporary administrator of the Archdiocese in the capital city of San Salvador.

The church may have unwittingly encouraged the present civil war. After the Medellin conference, Salvadoran Catholics organized "base communities" that evolved into political cells. In reaction, right-wing vigilantes declared open season on Catholic lay workers and missionaries suspected of leftist activity. A pivotal event was the 1980 assassination in San Salvador of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, an outspoken opponent of the government, while he was saying Mass. Romero has become a martyr to the poor and to the rebellious left. John Paul may pray at Romero's tomb in the Metropolitan Cathedral, a gesture fraught with political significance. The right wing contends that the guerrillas have distorted Romero's nonviolent, nonpartisan social views, and fears that the Pope's action will be used by the insurgents as an endorsement of their cause. Ironically, the Pope may be greeted when he arrives by the man who has been accused of ordering the shooting of Romero: Roberto d'Aubuisson, 39, the rightist president of El Salvador's Constituent Assembly.

> Guatemala's church hierarchy, led by Central America's only Cardinal, Mario Casariego, 74, has been slow to protest brutal attempts by that country's rulers to suppress critics and suspected insurgents. But within four months of General Efrain Rios Montt's bloodless coup in 1982, the bishops openly accused the new regime of repeatedly massacring highland Indians in its counterinsurgency campaign. Government moves to ease repressive measures emboldened the bishops to speak out. Rios Montt's rise to power had also heightened rivalry between the Catholic Church and a number of highly evangelistic Protestant denominations. Some 84% of Guatemala's 7.5 million people call themselves Roman Catholics, but the number of Protestants has dramatically increased over the past decade to more than 1 million. The most important convert: Rios Montt, a devout Pentecostal.

Guatemala's Protestants held a rally last year at Campo de Marte Stadium, where the Pope will be celebrating Mass next week. Rios Montt spoke, and the turnout of 700,000 was impressive to loyal Catholics. Evangelical missionaries from the U.S. are full of praise for Rios Montt, who has reduced the level of violence in Guatemala and cracked down on government corruption. Catholics agree, but complain that Evangelicals are using Rios Montt's presidency to push for more power in Guatemala and claim that he is deliberately playing down the papal visit. Rios Montt has agreed to meet John Paul, and all Guatemala will be watching to see whether he demonstrates genuine warmth toward the Pope or merely offers a polite but formal handshake.

The other countries on John Paul's itinerary may not provide as much drama, but they hold considerable importance for the church and the stability of the region. In Honduras, for example, the church faces a serious vocations crisis, with only 51 native priests for a Catholic population of 3.7 million. In Haiti, the dictatorship of President-for-Life Jean Claude Duvalier poses a challenge to the church's commitment to human rights. Before returning to Rome, John Paul will address 80 Latin American bishops at a conference in Port-au-Prince. His remarks could be the most important of the journey.

For princes of the church as well as or paupers, high expectations await John Paul along his route. He will attract and charm the multitudes, and he will delineate policies for his bishops and priests. But above all, said Archbishop Achille Silvestrini, the Vatican's top foreign affairs official, "I believe the arrival of the Pope will be the occasion to say 'Basta [Enough]! Basta with death! Basta with violence!'" -- By Richard N. Ostllng. Reported by Bernard Diederlch/Managua and Timothy Loughran/San Salvador

With reporting by Bernard Diederlch, Timothy Loughran This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.