One of the first Romans to visit Geneva was Julius Caesar, who 2,000 years ago destroyed a bridge there to keep the Helvetians from crossing the Rhone River. Last week another historic Roman personage was in Geneva, not to destroy bridges but to build them. As part of the seventh, briefest, and quite possibly busiest trip abroad of his pontificate, Pope Paul VI paid an unprecedented "fraternal visit" to the headquarters of the World Council of Churches in the city of John Calvin and Rousseau.
From the viewpoint of public interest, the Geneva trip was something of a disappointment. Except for an open-air evening Mass celebrated by the Pope in the Pare de la Grange, where 60,000 people showed up, the crowds were amazingly small. Some Protestant traditionalists showed their displeasure at the visit by holding a prayer vigil at the supposed site of Calvin's grave, and nine Presbyterian ministers picketed World Council headquarters with signs saying "No peace with Rome" shortly before the Pope's arrival. The major threat to the peace of the day—a planned demonstration by Ulster's militant Rev. Ian Paisley—was foiled when Swiss authorities stopped him at the airport.
One Dimension. Officially, the Pope's major appearance of the exhausting 20-hour day was his address to the 50th-anniversary meeting of the International Labor Organization, which had first invited him to Geneva. In an impassioned 4,500-word, 40-minute speech, Paul gave his listeners a sympathetic, near-encyclopedic appraisal of the problems of the workingman. He quoted New Left Philosopher Herbert Marcuse, lamenting that technology was threatening to turn man into a creature of "one dimension," and warmly praised French Socialist Albert Thomas, who founded the ILO half a century ago. The rebellion of youth, said the Pontiff, "resounds like a signal of suffering and an appeal for justice" against a technological world that has no worthwhile place for them.
The real event of the trip was Pope Paul's carefully planned one-hour visit to the headquarters of the World Council. Presbyterian Eugene Carson Blake, general secretary of the World Council, acknowledged the historic import of the meeting in his welcome, telling the Pope that his visit "proclaims to the whole world that the ecumenical movement flows on ever wider, ever deeper toward the unity and renewal of Christ's church." For his own part, Pope Paul seemed to indicate that such unity might have to wait a while. He startled some World Council members by explicitly calling attention to his papal office—the one issue likely to keep the Catholic
Church out of the organization for some years to come. "Our name is Peter," said the Pope. "Scripture tells us which meaning Christ has willed to attribute to this name, what duties He lays upon us, the responsibilities of the apostle and his successors."