Sanitary Tour

Cleaning up the Pope's visit

Nobody can use the Pope," said Bishop Antonio Fortich in the Philippine province of Negros Occidental last week. "Where a crisis exists, that's where the Holy Father should go." Nonetheless, a sugar-coated curtain seemed to be descending over the forthcoming visit of Pope John Paul II to the Philippines. Originally, the Pontiff planned to tour some of the more impoverished sections of the country. Yet President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda are desperately trying to keep the papal visit as sanitary as possible; some Philippine bishops had anticipated just such an attempt last year and wrote to the Pope urging him to cancel his trip to their country.

What the Pope will get in his Philippine visit, apparently, is a somewhat manicured tour. A design for an outdoor altar evoking fishermen's nets was interdicted by First Lady Imelda as too "poor." He had intended to visit a prison; the stop was deleted from his itinerary. He wanted to see a leper colony; instead, a small group of lepers will greet him in a Manila suburb. At the mountain resort of Baguio, John Paul will be entertained by a group of pagan tribespeople, sporting G strings and spears. The Catholic tribespeople, who usually wear Western clothing and eschew spears, will be relegated to the background.

Perhaps the most blatant prettification will occur in Manila itself, where John Paul is scheduled to tour Tondo, a slum that is being hastily and intensely renovated. Yet should John Paul choose to step beyond the prescribed bounds, he will find a grimy row of shanties just two blocks away. Despite these obstacles, Jaime Cardinal Sin of Manila is certain that the Pope will somehow make contact with his country's poor. Says the Cardinal: "He wants to come and console these people."

If nothing else, the Pope's visit will serve to regularize a number of informal liaisons among Filipino believers. Father Melchor Dano, pastor of a parish in Tondo, last month performed a mass wedding for 36 couples who had been living in sin. He followed that with a mass baptism for their children--so that all concerned could greet the Pope as bona fide Catholics. qed

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