In Latin America, the Pope deplores Marxist influences
Seen from the airplane above, all of Mexico City winked and sparkled as thousands of people caught afternoon sunlight in tiny mirrors and flashed a farewell up to Pope John Paul II. It was a showy, yet fond ending to a spectacular seven-day tour. And it reflected not only the depth of religious feeling that has survived a 120-year attempt to secularize Mexico, but the popular impact of the Pope's good-natured and forceful personality. "It was the greatest success any foreign leader has ever scored in Mexico," a local journalist noted. Besides being a public relations coup, the tour had had its substantive side. For it was the occasion of John Paul's first major policy speech, on the agonizing question of Christianity and social revolution.
The turnout of Mexicans intent on seeing the Pope in person defied counting. Many millions greeted him at motorcades, Masses, festivals. Much of his 81 -mile route from Mexico City to Puebla lay through a valley of humanity that lined the road, including the aged and the sick who came in hope of a cure.
Through an exhausting schedule that took him more than 15,000 miles to the Dominican Republic, Mexico and the Bahamas, the Pope proved ever willing to run late in order to make time for people. Near the Guadalajara Cathedral, a crippled teenage girl waited in hopes of meeting John Paul, but he did not see her at first in the press of the crowd. When someone whispered to him about the girl, he whirled around and waded into the mob to find her. He never did.
Wherever he went, the Pope was greeted with showers of confetti, fireworks, floating balloons, flocks of white doves and plenty of overzealous rhetoric. In Puebla, an excited priest, warming up the gigantic crowd assembled at a soccer field, referred to the Pope as "John the Baptist, Christ in the flesh, and the new Moses." Near Oaxaca, in the heart of Mexico's largest concentration of traditional Indian culture, John Paul sat atop a massive dais as women performed a stately dance and men wearing giant white clown masks stomped about. Everywhere, street peddlers hawked papal photos or T shirts with the papal portrait.
The Pope had come to Mexico to address the third continent-wide meeting of Latin American bishops and urge a care fully balanced commitment to both spiritual and social goals. The bishops' meeting at Puebla is discussing church strategy in Latin America, where oppressive regimes and desperate poverty abound. In consequence, many priests have turned to "liberation theology" and revolutionary Marxist thinking. In their view, work for social and economic revolution is central to the church's task.