Pope Asserts Authority Over Clergy in Peru

Amid tight security precautions, Pope John Paul II arrived in troubled Peru on Friday and quickly asserted firm papal authority over ideologically divided Peruvian bishops and priests.

In a speech to priests, members of religious orders and some bishops, the pontiff warned that they must “not permit any attempt to secularize religious life or to involve it in any sociopolitical projects that should be alien to it.”

Ending the seventh day of his current journey to three South American countries and the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, the Pope was met by ranks of armed soldiers and guard dogs at the Lima airport. The precautions were a reflection of tension in Peru, which is afflicted by a Marxist insurgency by members of a group known as Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path).

Thousands of people were rounded up by police before the Pope’s arrival, electricity supplies in Lima were cut two days previously by guerrilla saboteurs and Communist labor unions have called a strike for today in Arequipa, a city that the pontiff will be visiting.

Historic Authority

In firm language, the Pope laid heavy stress on his historic authority and criticized the beliefs of liberal members of the clergy who have strayed from the Vatican’s teaching concerning liberation theology.

He told the priests and members of religious orders, who gathered to hear him in the Lima Cathedral, that they must “avoid everything that could make one think that a double hierarchy or a double magisterium exists in the church.” The comment referred to the teachings of some liberation theologians that the authority of the church should rise from the people rather than descend from the Pope.

Earlier, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, the Pope forcefully repeated a central theme of his Latin American pilgrimage, telling an audience of impoverished people in one of the continent’s worst slums that he wants to share their misery and work “to liberate the oppressed.”

Speaking in a slum called El Guasmo, where 350,000 people live in shacks without sanitation facilities, the pontiff deplored the appalling living conditions and likened their suffering to “the Way of the Cross.”

He said, “I want to lift you up and take your Way of the Cross into my heart.”