An "Essentially Pastoral" Visit

By George Russell

In Canada, John Paul mixes strong words and tact

He came to preach about "the issues of our time, concerning culture, the community, technology, the family, sharing and justice." But, he said, his visit was "essentially pastoral." As Pope John Paul II launched a twelve-day, 8,000-mile voyage across Canada last week, it seemed as if the Pontiff had decided to avoid major political or doctrinal controversy. Instead, on his 23rd foreign tour, the first papal visit ever to Canada, John Paul concentrated on his forte: warming the crowds who come to see him, then using the glow he inspires to stir reflection.

During the first week of his trip John Paul quickly turned characteristic Canadian reserve into enthusiasm, as he switched with ease from exhortative Pontiff to caring pastor. At an outdoor Mass for an estimated 250,000 worshipers at Quebec City's Laval University, the Pope urged a "missionary effort" to develop a "new culture that will integrate the modernity of America even while preserving its deep-seated humanity." At the shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupre on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, he greeted a crowd of more than 3,000 colorfully garbed Indians and Eskimos, using seven native languages ranging from Algonquin and Micmac to Mohawk and a passable Inuit (Eskimo) dialect. In the tiny Newfoundland community of Flatrock (pop. 869), John Paul blessed local codfishing boats from a seaside platform, then radioed, "Good fishing, safe passage and God's blessing" to the fishermen at sea.

As has long been his custom, the Pope had strong words to offer on secular issues. At Ste. Anne de Beaupre, he declared that "every people should fashion its own economic and social development," tacit encouragement for activist native groups haggling with the Canadian government in Ottawa. At a wildly enthusiastic youth rally in Montreal's Olympic Stadium, hundreds of dancers arrayed themselves before the Pope in the form of a dove. He urged the festive audience, "Have the courage to resist the dealers in deception who make you pay dearly for a moment of 'artificial paradise'--a whiff of smoke, a bout of drinking or drugs."

In the provincial capital of St. John's, the Pope issued a firm appeal for publicly funded religious education. (In Canada, that is a less inflammatory issue than in the U.S., since many provinces already fund some, if not all, Roman Catholic schools.) In Toronto, John Paul told a gathering of non-Catholic Christian church leaders that "the needs of the poor must take priority over the desires of the rich" and that ecumenical cooperation is needed to confront the moral implications of technological development.

Where the Pope exercised tact was in relation to the conservative moral and doctrinal stands that he favors and that grate on many of Canada's 11 million Catholics. In Moncton, New Brunswick, at an outdoor Mass attended by 75,000, he mentioned only in passing "the right to life from the moment of conception." The Pope's views on clerical vocations for women were referred to, obliquely, in a Montreal homily praising the "manual labor" of newly beatified Marie-Leonie Paradis, founder of a religious order that provides domestic help to seminarians. But John Paul also countenanced the distribution of Communion wafers by women during one of his Masses, something never done on his previous trips abroad.

As he moved on this week to northern and western Canada, both the tone and the substance of John Paul's visit seemed well established. So was the electricity of his papal style. Father Jules Dion, a missionary who brought 35 Eskimo parishioners from a remote village to see John Paul, might have been speaking for all Canadians when he said, "The Pope's visit here gave them an idea of the universality of the church." --By George Russell. Reported by Jordan Bonfante and Mania Gauger with the Pope

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante, Marcia Gauger