The Pilgrim

Behind the smothering barrier of Vatican pomp and tradition, Pope Paul VI has often seemed a cold, formal and essentially unsympathetic figure -- an uncomfortable clerical prisoner of the baroque ecclesiastical past.

Something of the real man behind the ermine curtain came through on his historic trips to the Holy Land and to India. And last week, when the Pope undertook still another precedent-making voyage, a 32-hour pilgrimage to the U.S., the world saw still more of the real Paul--a kindliness and inner warmth that displayed once more the man's humanity.

Fatigue & Peekaboo. "You have before you a man like you, your brother " Paul told the U.N. For once, it could be believed. Nudged and cheered by surging crowds, kept under all but constant surveillance by television cameras, Paul appeared no less the spiritual monarch but more the appealing human being. Like other men, a Pope can suffer from the cold--a fact made clear when Paul alter a momentary breath of the 44DEG weather that greeted him in New York abruptly switched from his open-top Lincoln to an enclosed limousine for the ceremonial motorcade through the city Popes, too, can tire: unerringly, cameras zoomed in to catch the lines of fatigue that etched his lean, ascetic face. And no more for the Pope than for other men will blustery winds die down at will. Time and again the Pope had to clutch desperately at his white zucchetto (skullcap) to keep it from sailing off into the air. During his farewell speech at Kennedy Airport, a stray gust whipped Paul's cloak over his head and face--and for an incongruous, hilarious split second, the spiritual leader of 584 million Roman Catholics looked like nothing so much as a grownup playing peekaboo with the children.

Far more typical of his personality was the calm, winning grace with which he carried through the exhausting ritual of his visit--and with which he happily departed from protocol when the spirit moved him. There was visible friendship and affection in the two-handed gesture with which he saluted crowds, in the avuncular kiss with which he rewarded a child.

Preference for Sea. It was conceivably the longest day that Paul had ever spent. The pilgrimage began shortly after 5 in the morning--after midnight New York time--when Paul, with an entourage that included seven cardinals, a dozen other papal aides, and 60 newsmen and photographers, boarded a chartered Alitalia DC-8 at Rome's Fiumi-cmo Airport. On the nine-hour flight Paul slept only a little, played the considerate host. He left his isolated forward cabin twice to visit the newsmen, handed out commemorative medals,' amiably posed for pictures and answered some questions. "I know you are a bad air traveler and prefer to go by sea," he reminded Australia's aging Norman Cardinal Gilroy. Replied His Eminence gamely: "Traveling with you this way is different."

The morning was brisk, bright and blustery when the papal jet landed at Kennedy Airport. There was the customary exchange of greetings with a phalanx of dignitaries, and soon Paul was bundled off on a 24-mile, two-hour motorcade through Queens and Manhattan (including parts of Negro and Spanish Harlem), where more than 2,000,000 exuberant but respectful New Yorkers crushed to the curbstones. In some places the cheering onlookers were packed five and ten deep along the streets, and Fifth Avenue was a solid sea of faces. But embarrassingly long stretches of the papal route were almost bereft of welcomers, as millions of other New Yorkers apparently used the cool October weather as an excuse to obey police suggestions that they stay home and watch it all on television.*

Cheers in the Cathedral. The journey ended at Fifth Avenue's St. Patrick's Cathedral. As the Pope entered the great grey church, 3,500 invited guests welcomed him with a roof-raising hosanna of cheers and applause, a response never heard before in the cathedral's staid confines. Moist-eyed at the greeting, Paul prayed briefly before the high altar; a chorus intoned the traditional Tu Es Petrus (Thou Art Peter). In response to Francis Cardinal Spellman's welcome, Paul reiterated the purpose of his mission and asked "for your prayerful support of our message of peace." Then, he came out a side door of the cathedral to walk along its stone terrace, smiling and waving to the more than 50,000 people who thronged the surrounding streets. At one point, the Pope's grim-faced security guards had to dissuade him from walking down the cathedral steps into the crowd.

Waiting for Paul in a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria was Lyndon Johnson. Officially, the first meeting of Pontiff and President on U.S. soil was expected to last about half an hour, but it was unthinkable that a normally voluble Italian and an incurably loquacious Texan could stick to schedule--so the two men, assisted by two interpreters, talked on for 46 minutes about Viet Nam, India, Pakistan, the Dominican Republic, the conquest of hunger. Paul praised recent U.S. efforts to advance the cause of civil rights. Johnson thought that the Pope's visit would provide a much needed stimulant to the prestige and power of the U.N. "It has been to me a very inspiring conversation," said the President, who gave the Pope a small vermeil globe as a memento. Paul, who distributed gifts every where he went, gave Johnson a contemporary painting of the resurrected Christ by an Italian painter named Luigi Filocamo.

Overstatement. Though he mentioned peace everywhere Paul spoke nowhere more passionately than in his address before delegates, heads of state and foreign ministers at the United Nations Speaking in French (one of the five official U.N. languages), he--perhaps intentionally--overstated the world position and role of the U.N. "This organization," he told the delegates "represents the sole and only path of modern civilization and of world peace." He applauded the wisdom of the Assembly in opening its membership to new nations, and pointedly urged the U.N. to "strive to bring back among you any who have left you, and seek a means of bringing into your pact of brotherhood, in honor and loyalty, those who do not yet share in it."

Universal brotherhood, he argued, is necessary to remove from man the spec ter of war: "Never one against the other, never again, never more" he cried. "If you wish to be brothers," he added, "lay down weapons. One cannot love with offensive weapons in hand. Those weapons, especially those terrible weapons that modern science has given you, long before they produce victims and ruins, cause bad dreams, foster bad feelings, create nightmares and distrust."

The task of the U.N., the Pope continued, is not merely to prevent conflict but to organize cooperation among nations for the common good of mankind. In dealing with the problem of overpopulation and world hunger, he said, "Your task is to ensure that there is enough bread on the tables of mankind, and not to encourage an artificial birth control, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life." Finally, he proposed that any permanent edifice of peace must be based upon the "moral conscience of man"--implying a faith in God, "the father of all men."

"A Great Message." Paul's 30-minute address was dutifully greeted by a long round of applause and enthusiastic comment. "A great message," said Guatemala's Foreign Minister Alberto Herrarte. "A very great event in the history of the United Nations," seconded Foreign Minister Spyros Kyprianou of Cyprus. Commenting on television, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen paraphrased Goethe: "If you ever treat men the way they are, you never improve them; if you talk to them the way you want them to be, they become better."

Beneath the surface of praise, however, was an undercurrent of disappointment that the Pope had not said more, or said it better. In substance, he had made no departure or advance from the pronouncements of his predecessors. His poignant plea for an end to war predictably could be--and was--applauded by Moscow, Washington, London and Paris (Peking was silent). There were nuances in the speech that could give U.S. policymakers pause. One was Paul's implied suggestion that Red China should be welcomed to the U.N.--a notion that easily lent encouragement to those nations who oppose U.S. policy on that score. The Pope's peace-at-almost-any-price tone could be used as an argument against the U.S.'s firm anti-Communist policy.

Many people were disturbed by the Pope's apparently gratuitous reference to birth control; the Rev. Eugene Carson Blake, Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, thought it a disappointingly "sectarian" note, and many others read Paul's statement as a sign that the Catholic Church may yet refuse to modernize its views on the subject.

Mantle, Maris, Montini. From a sectarian note, Paul turned at length to an ecumenical touch. After a reception at the U.N.--where he exchanged a long and earnest handshake with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko--the Pope left for a meeting with Orthodox, Protestant and Jewish leaders at the nearby Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Family. There was no hint of

"Return to Rome" in his greeting either to the separated "Christian brothers" or to those of other faiths. In a speech of welcome, Philip Klutznick, of the Jewish Center for the U.N., reminded the Pope of Israel's proud and ancient word for peace; Paul quietly responded: "Shalom."

The climax of Paul's visit was yet to come. That night he celebrated Mass before more than 90,000 people in Yankee Stadium--an occasion that turned the old arena, one Catholic noted, into "the home of Mantle, Maris and Montini." Instead of a solemn pontifical Mass, Paul chose to recite a simple Low Mass, to which the congregation responded rousingly in English. In keeping with the liturgical reforms of the Vatican Council, lessons were read by laymen, and twelve children--the only ones to receive Communion from the Pope that day--brought the bread and wine to the altar to be consecrated.

Speaking his sermon in thickly accented English, the Pope dwelt on Christ's seventh beatitude, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Said Paul: "If we truly wish to be Christians, we must love peace. We must conform our minds to the thought of peace."

"Tutti Buoni." To great, deafening, farewell cheers, the papal motorcade then whisked to the World's Fair for a brief tour of the Vatican pavilion. There, visibly exhausted, the Pope stared blankly for a while at Michelangelo's Pietd in its unaccustomed setting,* gave his blessing to the modest crowd that braved the night air for a final glimpse of the Pontiff. Then he was hurried back to Kennedy Airport for the TWA flight home--14 hours after his arrival in New York.

"What impressed you particularly?" a reporter asked Paul as they neared Rome. Answered the Pope, smiling: "Tutti cari, tutti buoni [All dear, all good]." The next day, following his return, he told the bishops at the Vatican Council that "the Catholic Church has assumed a greater obligation to serve the cause of peace because of the fact that, through our voice, she has solemnly pleaded its cause."

Instrument of the Godless. There was, of course, a measure of redundancy in the Pope's statement; even before Paul's address, no one had seriously doubted that he and his church were committed to world peace. But it was an open question whether the speech--no matter how sincere its message and dramatic the circumstance--would do much to further his lofty goals. Certainly it would bolster the morale of the professional diplomats who hope to see the U.N. roused from its present state of impotence. Certainly the Pope's unqualified endorsement of the organization would swing to it a degree of popular support, particularly from the Catholics who have long suspected it to be an instrument of the godless.

Though it was possible to question the lasting impact of Paul's peacemaking address, it was impossible to deny that his mission was an unmistakable land mark in history, another great personal triumph for the Pope. Perhaps the most lasting effect of the pilgrimage would be what theologians might call a "demythologizing" of the papacy. In escaping again the museum-like confines of the Vatican for the secular world, the Pope dramatized his wish to be not only the Vicar of Christ but also the servant of the servants of God. In a world grown tired and suspicious of ritual and mystery, it was well for the humble man Paul to be recognized beneath the exalted churchly office. For the more the world was able to see his stature as a man, the more, perhaps, it might be willing to heed his words as Pope.

* Paul's visit was given almost continuous coverage by all three networks and the city's independent stations, was seen on TV by about 125 million Americans.

* The famed statue will return to Rome by ship on Nov. 2, two weeks after the fair closes. It is unlikely that it will ever be moved again. Recently it was decreed that henceforth Vatican art treasures may not be sent out on loan.

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