No Compromise With Terrorism, Pontiff Urges

Mindful of recent acts of terrorism in Europe, including bombs directed against North Atlantic Treaty Organization targets in Belgium, Pope John Paul II called Monday for an uncompromising international stand against terrorism.

The pontiff urged that there be no “compromise whatsoever with terrorism, which uses the lives and possessions of innocent men as means. Terrorism, for whatever motives, must absolutely be banned by humanity, (through) a true agreement among all nations.”

The Pope, who has preached against extremist violence throughout his 6 1/2-year papacy and was himself the target of an assassination attempt in 1981, made the remarks while addressing Belgian King Baudouin I and the country’s diplomats and political leaders during the last full day of a pilgrimage to the Benelux countries. After five troubling days in the Netherlands, a day and a half in Luxembourg and five days in Belgium, he will return to Rome late today.

Expanding on his theme of human rights in the address to the Belgian leaders, the Pope inveighed against the violation of man’s dignity “in a materialistic vision that sees only his economic value or that agrees to sacrifice him as a means to an end, to manipulate him in many ways.

‘Dignity of Life’

“These rights also concern the dignity of life--that is, the material possibility of living a decent life--but in addition the freedom of spirit, of opinion, of convictions and beliefs . . . the banishment of torture, of imprisonment and other degrading procedures for offenses connected with one’s opinions,” he said.

At an international level, the Pope went on, “we must reinforce the agreement between nations to stop the arms race, to reduce investments in arms of mass extermination. . . . How can we accept the absurd wars going on in different parts of the world, with the ruin and deaths that result?”

‘Inalienable Right’

Making a strong defense of the church’s positions on abortion and human dignity, the leader of the world’s 800 million Roman Catholics stressed man’s “inalienable right (to life) from conception to old age” in his remarks to the Belgian leadership.

Later, he addressed leaders of the European Community, which has its headquarters in Brussels. In those remarks, he decried genetic experimentation with human embryos, saying that the embryo “must not be submitted to experiments as if it were an object.” Nor should man continue to tolerate the “moral and spiritual decline” that such practices represent, he told the European leaders.

“The ease with which science interferes with biological processes may lead to fatal aberrations. The wonderful act of transmitting life is partly deprived of its meaning,” and couples “with the consent of society too often refuse the dignity of man and the right to live to the defenseless human being.”

He also deplored “manipulations violating the nature of man”--such as test-tube fertilization--to satisfy “the wish to have a child.”