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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, February 27, 1981
exceptional circumstances." Yet, on several occasions, before slum dwellers
and agricultural workers, he counselled the poor not to resort to "hate,
class struggle or violence" to redress their grievances. He did uphold,
however, the sugar workers' rights to organize--a hot political issue--to
fight for a "just share" of the industry's profits.
The pope, while hardly shunning political issues himself, counselled the
Philippines' political activist priests against meddling in politics as he
did on an earlier trip to Mexico. "You are priests...you are not social
or political leaders or officials of a temporal power."
While on Mindanao, the pope appealed for peace among the island's bat
tling Christians and Muslims, saying they were "passengers on the same
ship." (A corcunon-front approach toward all religions was evident on his
stopover in Karachi, Pakistan--an obvious goodwill gesture directed to
the world's 800 million Muslims.)
John Paul II also used an occasion in the Philippines to send a radio
transmission to all Asia. The message was directed primarily to Corcununist
China, however. He said he "ardently desired to express my affection and
esteem to all my brothers and sisters of the Church in China."
Chinese authorities have separated Chinese Catholics from the authority of
Rome. The pope wants to restore this link, and desires greatly to go to
China. ("He wants to go everywhere," noted a Vatican insider.)
The trip to Japan was the first ever for a reigning pope.
(There are only
400,000 Catholics in Japan). In Tokyo, the Pope spoke ecumenically to
Shinto and Buddhist leaders, saying that Christians "are willing to col
laborate with you on behalf of man's dignity (and) his innate rights."
Visiting the "ground zero" areas of atomic-bomb-devastated Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, the pope--ernbellishing his image as tireless worker for world
peace--pledged that "we will work untiringly for disarmament and the ban
ishing of all nuclear weapons. Let us replace violence and hate with
confidence and caring."
More on the "travelling pope's" trips corning
in our other publications.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau