People

By Guy D. Garcia

The 24,000-mile journey would have tired even the most zealous globetrotter, so it was understandable if Pope John Paul II appeared just a trifle fatigued during his seven-day visit to Australia last week. Arriving directly from a six-day tour of Bangladesh, Singapore, Fiji and New Zealand, the peripatetic Pontiff marked his first visit to the island continent with a blitz that , included stops in the capital, Canberra, the state capitals of Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, and the outlying -- very outlying -- city of Darwin and town of Alice Springs. Despite the hectic pace, his Holiness was never too busy to shake an outstretched hand or, in the case of a sedentary koala named Simon, a diffidently proffered claw. The Pope-koala encounter came at Brisbane's Queen Elizabeth II stadium, where the Pontiff obligingly held the animal in his arms before delivering an address to the assembled press on the dignity of their craft.