An Imposing Messenger from Rome

A touring Pope defines his policy and falls under the spell of Africa's exuberance

He said his Masses in traditional Latin. He delivered his weighty policy pronouncements in badly accented French to huge but quiet audiences. With a pontifical smile, he watched spectacular, sun-drenched displays of faith and affection. But not till the fourth day of his dramatic pilgrimage across the continent did the irrepressible exuberance of Africa really get to Pope John Paul II.

It happened 1,250 miles upriver from the sea, at Kisangani, a Zairean city surrounded by one of the world's densest jungles. As the papal plane touched down, a band of horns, drums and a guitar beat out religious tunes. Two lines of teen-age girls in green swayed, sang and clapped their hands joyously. Swept up by the infectious rhythms, everyone, including the press, began to dance, even the veteran diplomatic correspondent of Italy's staid Corriere della Sera. When John Paul reached the green lines, he suddenly began to dance too, his big frame swaying back and forth to the rhythmic beat, his face beaming.

The world that is much with John Paul back in Rome is that of the West, where new theologians question church doctrines, while churches and seminaries increasingly stand half empty. In Africa, though, Christianity is burgeoning faster than anywhere else in the world. It is a creed to be lived and enjoyed, not debated. On Sunday mornings, people will walk for miles to get to a Mass or a Protestant service. The streets in many villages become deserted; everyone is at church, having a good time.

Last week as the Pope moved from Zaire to Congo, Kenya, Ghana, Upper Volta and the Ivory Coast, torrents of people poured into city plazas and thoroughfares to catch a glimpse of the white-robed Holy Father. In Kinshasa the rush to see John Paul produced tragedy. Part of the turnout, which eventually numbered 1 million, had waited for hours to get into the cordoned area at the Palace of the People. As the gates opened at 5:30 a.m., nine people were trampled to death in the stampede, dozens were hospitalized, and an estimated 500 had minor injuries. The Pope did not learn of the deaths until hours later.

When the papal tour moved on to Kenya, the congregation in Nairobi's Uhuru (Freedom) Park numbered 600,000. The blind and crippled mingled in the throng in the hope of receiving a papal blessing, but it was difficult for multitudes in neighboring Tanzania and Uganda to attend. Tanzania has sealed its border with Kenya. Both Tanzania and Uganda refused to release exchange currency for those who wished to travel, though Uganda's President Godfrey Bi-naisa arrived anyway. Some got in without money. A Tanzanian woman from Moshi made it across the border by walking at night through the bush and then begging a bus ride: "I knew that if I didn't come I would die without seeing the Pope."

At one level, the tour was a cavalcade of Africanization. The crowds in Brazzaville, Congo, shook gourd rattles and castanets, waved palm branches, bouquets, homemade crucifixes. In a church near Kinshasa, old women trilled highpitched lullaloos, and the officiating Belgian priest wore a monkey-skin headdress with the tail running down his back. Among the gifts presented to John Paul in Nairobi: primitive paintings, an animal-skin cape, an antelope horn, daggers, a spear and shield, and a tribal headdress that he gamely donned.

On the tour, an expert on Vatican policy explained the Pope's problem:

"If too much Africanization is permitted, the church will pull away from Rome; but if Africanization is not .permitted, the churches here will be empty." The Pope paid tribute to the African experience: "Your church has been grafted on the great tree of the church, where, for 100 years, it has drawn its sap, which now permits it to give its fruits to the church and to become itself missionary to others. Your church will have to deepen its local African dimension, without ever forgetting its universal dimension. I know your fervent attachment to the Pope. I say also to you: Through him, remain united to the whole church." But wherever he went John Paul also emphasized the limits of Africanization, pointing out that Africa's Catholics are part of the universal church. He praised bishops for their loyalty to the papacy. Though celibacy is unpopular in Africa, he persistently called for reinforcement of the rule, stating that priests must not only follow it but be personally convinced of its "positive and essential values." In a region of widespread polygamy and common-law marriage, he insisted upon the church's advocacy of monogamy and sacramental marriage, with no divorce allowed. "The original couple, in the design of God, is monogamous--the union [is] indissoluble on all levels," he said. "Christian couples have an irreplaceable mission in today's world. The generous love and fidelity of husband and wife offer stability and hope to a world torn by hatred."

One thing the Pope clearly would like to Africanize is the ranks of the clergy. Black bishops head 70% of Africa's 353 dioceses, but two-thirds of the priests are still white missionaries. Seminary enrollments are growing, but not fast enough to keep up with the spread of African Catholicism. The pastoral gap is filled by widespread use of lay catechists. Africa's Protestants outnumber Catholics, perhaps in part because they have an overwhelmingly black clergy, and their churches are wholly independent of overseas control.

The Pope spoke repeatedly about Christianity's social role in Africa. In a week when two U.S. priests had to drop races for Congress because John Paul has reasserted the canon forbidding the clergy to take direct part in electoral politics, the papal point seemed contradictory. But John Paul's policy applies to priests, not laymen. He wants to leave social action basically to the laity, while bishops and priests speak out in principle for human and religious rights and against corruption and violence. "The against corruption and violence. "The Christian faith does not provide you with readymade solutions to the complex problems affecting contemporary society," he told the crowd in Nairobi's Uhuru Park. "But it does give you deep insights into the nature of man and his needs, calling you to speak the truth in love, to take up your responsibilities as good citizens and to work with your neighbors to build a society where true human values are nourished and deepened."

During a speech in Zaire, for instance, the Pope urged the clergy to train citizens who are "enemies of corruption, of lies and of injustice." That brought a roar from the crowd, since those evils have long been evident in the government of Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko, who is a Catholic.

In the trip's principal political speech, delivered before Nairobi's diplomatic corps, John Paul attacked "atheistic ideology." Under Mozambique's socialist regime, Catholics are in detention, and many people are denied their right of worship. Catholicism is naturally associated with the colonial Portuguese, but the government of President Samora Machel propagandizes against all religions. Many services have been banned, mission activities restricted, and churches and mosques have been padlocked.

In Marxist-ruled but predominantly Christian Ethiopia, the ousted Orthodox Patriarch was jailed in 1976. The general secretary of the Lutheran Church was twice arrested, then abducted in 1979, and has not been heard from since. Believers are forced to worship at dawn before the required Sunday-morning political indoctrination sessions. Some Christians have been tortured and murdered.

In other nations conditions are improving. For example, the Marxist regime in Angola at first did its best to expunge religion, but the government relented after Catholicism stood up for its rights.

The attitude toward religion is most perplexing in the People's Republic of the Congo. In 1977, Emile Biayenda became the second Cardinal in the century to be assassinated. But last month the nominally Marxist government of President Denis Sassou Nguesso established diplomatic relations with the Vatican and pleaded urgently to be included in the papal visit. The Congo needs to court Catholicism to shore up its popular support and counteract the influence of revolutionary religious sects that seek to overthrow the government. John Paul used his visit to remind Congolese officials that religious freedom is "at the center of respect for all the inalienable rights of the individual."

Politics and ecumenism blended effectively during the last two years in Ghana when Catholic, Anglican and Protestant leaders joined in openly criticizing human rights violations by two successive military regimes. Their action helped bring about the first elected civilian government in ten years. The former British colony, where Catholics are a distinct minority, was a fitting if exotic site for John Paul's first meeting with the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert A.K. Runcie, leader of the world's 65 million Anglicans and Episcopalians.

Some of Runcie's African flock are not entirely pleased about the Pope. Nairobi's Canon Kenneth Stovold has publicly complained that the Pope's attacks on birth control in Africa would spoil in tensive efforts to hold down the tremendous population increases on the continent. Colin Winter, the exiled bishop of Namibia (South West Africa) divides all Christians into the "church of the oppressor and the church of the oppressed." Says Winter sourly: "I don't think a Polish Pope can understand Africa. His attitudes are extremely reactionary. His hangup is Communism, Communism."

Runcie, 58, is anxious for good relations with Rome. Like John

Paul he is relatively young, so the two are likely to guide reunification efforts of their churches for many years. Their meeting was billed in advance as a mere formality, but after a friendly 45-minute conversation, they declared, "The time is too short and the need too pressing to waste Christian energy pursuing old rivalries," and added, "The talents and resources of all the churches must be shared if Christ is to be seen and heard effectively." They paid credit to the zeal of Africa's churches.

John Paul also was hopeful about ecumenical relations in his remarks in Kenya, where Catholics and Protestants are engaged in joint Bible translation, now quite common elsewhere in the world. They have also prepared an innovative ecumenical curriculum for religion classes in the schools, and are engaged in joint evangelistic work. Christian divisions are a "scandal to the world," John Paul told a meeting of non-Catholic leaders in Nairobi. "Especially to the young churches in mission lands. Truly the credibility of the Gospel message and of Christ himself is linked to Christian unity." In struggling to remove this "scandal," as in many other spiritual matters, Africa seems destined to play a dramatic part.

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