Togolese Poor Get a Surprise Papal Visit

Apparently distressed by the lavish life styles of the rulers of some of the small, poor countries he visits, Pope John Paul II paid a surprise visit Friday to a poverty-stricken mother and her children in a thatch-roofed mud hut.

Without warning, the pontiff ordered his motorcade to stop, alarming Vatican security officers, and strode to a cluster of mud huts in a scraggly corn patch to ask the people there, about 30 of them, about their lives.

He had spent the entire morning in northern Togo, visiting the luxuriously tiled and champagne-stocked palace in Pya of the impoverished country’s president, Gen. Gnassingbe Eyadema, blessing Eyadema’s mother’s tomb in an adjoining marble mausoleum and celebrating Mass on the marble stairway of the president’s massive and richly outfitted political headquarters in nearby Kara.

“I think the Holy Father wanted to underline the contrast with the marbled residence of the president,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls said in explaining John Paul’s decision to stop at the village.

‘Two Realities’

“He was aware of the two realities of Africa after visiting the presidential palace. He wanted to make clear that he was aware that wealth and poverty exist side-by-side in Africa.”

A Vatican official who asked to remain unidentified said that while John Paul recognizes that local rulers often use his visits as golden political opportunities for themselves, he is resigned to enduring a certain amount of exploitation in order to get his own message across.

“This is the price the Pope must pay when he visits a country,” the official said. “He must submit to some of the things done by the local leaders. He prefers to be among the people, but he always has to have lunch with the head of state.”

When the pontiff entered the mud hut during the break in his schedule he was so moved by the evident poverty of the woman and her children that he was almost speechless, according to several members of the entourage who accompanied him.

Moved by Experience

“He asked her in French how she lived and she explained that every morning she had to collect casava (a potato-type root) and cook it for her children,” Navarro said. “She was cooking it then. He was so moved that he couldn’t say anything at all. As he left, he said, ‘God bless you.’ ”

The pontiff also met later in the day with a group of animists who came with six of their priests to attend a papal ceremony at the mission of Our Lady of Lake Togo in Togoville. Animists believe that all natural phenomena have spirits.

Although they are pagans in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church many Africans retain the ancient animist beliefs. John Paul was gentle in his remarks to the animists, saying he was “very touched” that they came.

“Nature, exuberant and splendid in this place of forests and lakes, impregnates spirits and hearts with its mystery and orients them spontaneously toward the mystery of He who is the author of life,” the pontiff told them.

Animist Benediction

In return, the chief priest of the local animists, dressed in a black robe and carrying a whisk-like staff topped with animal hair, invoked the benediction of several animist spirits, including “the god of the rainbow who assembles us here.”

John Paul was received at every point of his trip across the entire length of Togo on Friday by thousands of tribal people, many of them carrying war clubs, bows and arrows and knives, and virtually all singing and dancing.

Today, the third day of his 12-day African journey, the Pope will fly to Abidjan, the main city in the Ivory Coast, to dedicate a massive new cathedral there, then to Yaounde, capital of Cameroon, where he will remain for four days.