Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 3—The Georgia Bulletin, September 13, 1979
....Visits The New World
The Perils Of Papal Travel
IOWA STOP -- Tourists ride a
horse-drawn wagon as they tour the
Living History Farms near Des
Moines, Iowa. Pope John Paul is
scheduled to visit the site on Oct. 4
to see examples of farms of the past
and future.
Iowa Visit Was Unexpected
WASHINGTON (NC) -
While the announcement
that Pope John Paul II
would visit metropolitan
areas such as Philadelphia,
Chicago and Washington
came as no surprise, the
inclusion of Des Moines,
Iowa, on the papal
itinerary had not been
expected.
By visiting Des Moines,
where he will celebrate
Mass at the 600-acre
Living History Farms, the
pope will have the
opportunity to address
what already has become a
major emphasis of his
p o n t i f icate -- the
importance of rural life,
the rights of the rural poor
and the right to land.
The selection of Des
Moines, though, as the
location of a visit by the
pope to the rural United
States came almost at the
last minute.
Father Robert N.
Lynch, papal visit
coordinator for the U.S.
bishops, said Vatican
officials may not have
even been considering a
trip to a rural area of the
United States until
invitations came in from
four rural U.S. dioceses.
“The holy father
himself was interested in
getting out of the cities,”
said Father Lynch about
the decision to include Des
Moines on the itinerary.
Des Moines probably
was selected, he added,
because it submitted the
best invitation and because
it had the best facilities to
offer.
In Des Moines, diocesan
officials also stressed that
the city is the
headquarters of the
National Catholic Rural
Life Conference and that
Monsignor Luigi Ligutti,
longtime Vatican observer
at the United Nations
Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) and
possibly one of the
church’s most articulate
defenders of family
farming, is a priest of the
Des Moines Diocese.
While the invitation was
extended formally by
Bishop Maurice J.
Dingman of Des Moines,
who also is president of
the rural life conference,
the idea to bring Pope
John Paul to Iowa was
conceived by Joseph A.
Hays, who farms 80 acres
at Truro, Iowa.
“I take no credit. The
idea came from an Iowa
farmer,” said Bishop
Dingman in an interview
with the CATHOLIC
MIRROR, newspaper of
the Des Moines Diocese.
Hays told the
CATHOLIC MIRROR the
idea to invite the pope to
Iowa came to him in
mid-July as he and his
pastor were watching
televised news reports that
the pope was planning to
visit the United States.
Hays said he invited the
pope to come to Iowa to
learn more about a
statement on rural life
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currently being written
and discussed in 44
Midwestern dioceses. The
statement, when
completed, will be signed
by the bishops of those
dioceses.
Hays is a regional
coordinator for the
hearings being held in the
diocese to solicit reaction
to the land statement.
“I was serious and
sincere about it right from
the start,” said Hays, who
noted that he considered it
a “gift of the Holy Spirit”
that he had had the
confidence to write his
letter inviting the pope to
Iowa.
The pope, Hays said, is
“very engrossed about
mankind today, in where
we will get food to feed
the world in 20 years and
There seemed to be no
response to the first
invitation, so on Aug. 8 a
second, more extensive
invitation was sent, this
one totaling nine pages
and including a packet of
other materials about rural
issues and the proposed
site of the pope’s visit,
according to a diocesan
spokesperson.
The first the general
public learned that Des
Moines was under serious
consideration for a papal
visit came after the
weekend of Aug. 18, when
members of the papal
“advance team,” including
Father Lynch and Bishop
Paul Marcinkus, a Vatican
official who served as
advance man for the
pope’s trips to Mexico and
Poland, visited the city.
Only Four Hours....
DES MOINES, Iowa (NC) - Pope John Paul II’s
visit to Des Moines will last only about four hours,
and tentative plans released by the Des Moines
Diocese call for him to stop only at Living History
Farms to celebrate Mass.
Sister Mira Mosle, a Sister of Charity of the
Blessed Virgin Mary and Des Moines diocesan
communications director, said the pope is scheduled
to arrive at the Des Moines airport about 1 p.m.
Oct. 4. Tentative plans call for transporting the
pope by helicopter to Living History Farms, but the
helicopter also might swing across the countryside
to give the pope an aerial view of Iowa farmland,
according to Sister Mosle.
At Living History Farms, a 600-acre working
farm model, the pope is expected to give about a
15- to 20-minute homily on rural life during the
Mass.
After Mass, Sister Mosle said, the pope will be
driven on a road into the crowd to give people a
better chance to see him. He then will return to the
airport by helicopter and leave Des Moines about 5
p.m.
Sister Mosle also indicated that officials are
considering taking the pope to a rural part of the
diocese during his four hours in Des Moines.
how we will utilize our
land.”
Hays handed Bishop
Dingman his letter of
invitation at a parish
picnic July 22. Five days
later, according to
diocesan officials, a
two-page letter by Bishop
Dingman outlining 10
reasons why the pope
should visit Iowa was sent
to the National
Conference of Catholic
Bishops.
Bishop Dingman
admitted that at first he
didn’t take Hays’ idea
seriously.
“The crucial moment
came when I said to
myself, ‘Look, you’re a
bishop who says the
greatest ideas always come
from the people. If you’ve
got an idea like that here,
you’d better use it.’ ”
Living History Farms is
a tract of land just west of
Des Moines run by a
private corporation as a
working model of farm
history. Crops are grown
and harvested using
methods from previous
eras of farm life.
Besides its ability to
handle the throngs of
Midwesterners expected to
travel to Des Moines to see
the pope, the Des Moines
Diocese reserved the farm
for its location as well,
according to diocesan
officials.
The farm is situated at
the junction of two
interstate highways
making it easily accessible
by freeway from
Minneapolis-St. Paul,
Kansas City, Mo., Omaha,
Neb., and Cedar Rapids
and Davenport, Iowa.
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For a variety of
reasons, good and bad, the
travels of modern popes
have sometimes
occasioned concern.
Many of the fears
simply reflect benevolent
anxiety for the safety of
the pontiff. When a
knife-wielding attacker
made an attempt on the
life of Pope Paul VI at the
Manila airport in 1970, the
efficacy of security
measures throughout his
entire Asian tour was
questioned. During the
same trip, the Sydney
MORNING TELEGRAPH
and other Australian
papers criticized
schedulers for subjecting
the frail-looking
73-year-old to an agenda
so grueling that he
appeared visibly
exhausted. Pope Paul, who
had been jostled by the
press of enthusiastic well
wishers on Jerusalem’s
VIA DOLOROSA in 1963,
never traveled extensively
after the 1970 tour.
AWKWARD
DIPLOMACY
Awkward diplomatic
situations have sometimes
complicated papal travels.
The President of officially
anticlerical Mexico
welcomed Pope John Paul
II earlier this year as a
“distinguished visitor” to
the country, addressing
him simply as “sir.”
Although U.S. Presidents
Wilson, Eisenhower, and
Kennedy had attended
papal audiences in the
Vatican, the visit of Pope
Paul VI to New York in
1965 excited American
squeamishness about
church and state, along
with traditional
suspiciousness of Rome.
President Johnson met the
Pope in a suite at the
Waldorf-Astoria hotel,
privately and unofficially.
The fear of setting a
precedent to which any
religious leader might
appeal also created a
problem for the United
Nations. Secretary General
U Thant accorded Pope
Paul the status of a chief
of state (Vatican City
State), speaking to the
General Assembly as his
personal guest. The
discomfiture of the Polish
government over how to
receive Pope John Paul II
was also evident.
POLITICAL
IMPLICATIONS
More substantial fears
of political implications
over-shadowed the niceties
of protocol on the Polish
journey as on others. The
announcement of Pope
Paul’s Holy Land
pilgrimage of 1963
touched off Arab fears.
The Cairo newspaper AL
AHRAM for instance
demanded a “clear
explanation” that the
Pope’s trip had “no other
motive than a natural visit
to the Holy Land,”
complaining that “Israel
has already embarked on
endeavors to exploit the
Pope’s pilgrimage for her
own ends.” The Israeli
ambassador to Italy, the
Arab Catholic Archbishop
Neofito Edelby, and
finally Pope Paul himself
emphasized that the
journey was completely
religious and nonpolitical.
Likewise, the Pope had to
stress that his 1970 Asian
trip was “exclusively
apostolic, hence, religious,
ecclesial, spiritual, and
missionary.”
GRATUITOUS
OFFENCE’
The mission of Pope
Paul to the Eucharistic
Congress in Bombay in
1964 produced the sort of
apprehensions often raised
by the prospect of a papal
visit. The very
announcement that the
Pope was going to India,
which had seized the
Portuguese colony of Goa
in 1961, was taken as a
“gratuitous offence” by
Portuguese, whose
government maintained a
“hurt and dignified
silence” about the trip.
Two Catholic papers in
that country even
New York And The UN
NEW YORK (NC) - Pope John Paul II will spend a
major portion of his October 2 day in New York at the
United Nations, giving the Vatican the chance to
emphasize the importance it attaches to the world body.
According to a previously released itinerary, the pope
is expected to arrive from Boston at Kennedy
International Airport around 10 a.m. and proceed directly
to the United Nations.
After a U.N. tour conducted by Secretary General Kurt
Waldheim, the pope will have lunch at the United Nations,
possibly with a group of diplomats.
Pope John Paul’s address to the General Assembly has
been scheduled for 3 p.m. The U.N. also hopes to have the
pope give two more addresses while at the U.N. and hopes
to host a reception for the pope.
A spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York said
the pope will celebrate Mass that evening at Yankee
Stadium but that a time for the Mass has not been set,
pending the conclusion of the pope’s activities at the U.N.
The next morning, Oct. 3, papal stops at Battery Park
and Shea Stadium are planned before he returns to the
airport to fly to Philadelphia.
The pope is scheduled to visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral
and a neighborhood in the South Bronx while in New
York, but an archdiocesan spokesman said September 10
those too have not been decided upon.
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ism
refrained from reporting
the Indian mission. Pope
Paul’s 1967 pilgrimage to
Fatima for the 50th
anniversary of the Marian
apparitions there may have
worked incidentally to
salve Portuguese feelings.
ROMAN’ CATHOLICS’
India viewed the Pope’s
visit with another kind of
apprehension. Fearing a
“papal invasion in
November,” the Organizer,
organ of the Hindu
political Peoples’ League
Party, demanded
cancellation of the entire
Eucharistic Congress.
“India has no objection to
Christ, but it has every
objection to ‘Roman’
Catholics,” thundered the
editorial. “India will
accept only ‘Indian’
Catholics. Anything else
will be a menace to the
security and integrity of
India.” The paper warned
of riots in reaction to what
it perceived as an alien,
Western religion. The
Indian government placed
under preventive detention
members of the Mahasaba
sect who would not
promise to avoid
disturbances, releasing
them only upon the
personal request of Pope
Paul. In the event, the
Pope’s trip was an
ecumencial and diplomatic
triumph which made the
early apprehensions seem
naive.
FEARS AROUSED
The impending visit of
Pope John Paul II has
already aroused fears for
his security in Ireland,
which has been troubled
for years with extremist
sectarian violence. Already
the Vatican has
emphasized the purely
“pastoral nature” of his
visit to the United States.
Pope John Paul’s physical
hardiness is evident, and
precedents would seem to
indicate that any concerns
regarding either politics or
safety -- beyond the
cautiousness appropriate
whenever large crowds are
assembled -- are
unwarranted.
YOUNG AUTHOR ~ Eleven-year-old Kevin
McLaughlin lies on his bed in his St. Michael,
Minn., home while doing some research on his
favorite subject - Pope John Paul II. The sixth
grader at St. Michael’s School is hoping for a
private audience when the pope visits the United
States in October. With more than 600 pictures of
popes, mostly Pope John Paul II, in his collection,
Kevin is writing a book, “The Tragedies,
Triumphs and Trials of Pope John Paul II,” and
hopes the pope will give him some help.
No ’Skins Game ...
WASHINGTON (NC) - The National Football League
has agreed to allow the Washington Redskins to trade
game dates with the Philadelphia Eagles to avoid
conflicting with the papal Mass scheduled for Oct. 7 on
the mall in Washington.
Originally, the Eagles were scheduled to play in
Washington Oct. 7, and the Redskins were scheduled to
play in Philadelphia Oct. 21. Now the dates will be
reversed: the first game between the two teams will be in
Philadelphia Oct. 7, and the second game will be in
Washington Oct. 21.
The switch was requested by Redskins’ president
Edward Bennett Williams after fears were expressed that
Washington would not be able to cope with two crowds
the same afternoon: the thousands upon thousands
expected to attend the pope’s Mass, and the 50,000 who
regularly attend Redskins’ games in Washington.
Before the switch was made, Williams said a flip-flop in
games dates would be “a reasonable solution to a horrible
traffic problem.” The papal Mass is scheduled for 3 p.m.,
and the Redskins’ game was scheduled for 1 p.m. at RFK
Stadium, two miles away.
The switch is not unprecedented. In previous years
NFL teams have traded dates to avoid conflicts with
post-season baseball playoffs.
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