Reporter’s Notebook : Pope, Still Fresh, Runs Aides and Journalists Ragged

A Melbourne psychiatrist with long experience in helping Roman Catholic clergymen believes he knows how Pope John Paul II wards off exhaustion on punishing trips abroad such as his current South Pacific-Indian Ocean pilgrimage.

Before the two-week journey ends on Tuesday, the pontiff will have traveled 30,000 miles by air, more than 200 miles in his car, the so-called Popemobile, and a considerable distance on foot. He will have delivered more than 50 speeches in 17 cities of six countries and shaken more hands and kissed more small children than a stumping politician.

He will rarely have been in bed much before midnight and will have been up by 5 a.m. every day. Moreover, his schedule has allowed virtually no nap time between his demanding public appearances, many of which require him to wear heavy vestments in steaming tropical heat.

Three of his 14 nights on the road will have been spent airborne without the comfort of a stable bed on which to sleep. About half of his meals will have have come out of an airplane warming oven.

On one day alone, today, he will cover almost 3,700 miles in flights from Melbourne on Australia’s south coast to Darwin in the tropical north, then to Alice Springs in the desolate, sun-baked center of the country and finally back to the south coast again to Adelaide where he will not finish his schedule of appearances until 10 p.m.

By the 11th day of the longest journey the Pope has ever taken, most of the 73 journalists who accompanied him from Rome and the 31 Vatican officials in his entourage were on the verge of collapse. But John Paul appeared fresh and energetic, despite an occasional stifled yawn, the only evidence he has displayed so far of the jet lag that has brought many of his traveling companions to their knees.

“If it gets to him as it does to us, he may become the first major world figure in history, certainly the first Pope, to die of jet lag,” quipped a groggy American reporter in Melbourne.

How does he do it?

Dr. Edmond Chiu, a senior lecturer at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne who has worked with priests for years, said he thinks he knows.

“He’s a very fit person,” Chiu said, then added the clincher: “Apart from that, he has spiritual resources on which to call which an average person may not have.”

Amazed an Anyone

The Pope’s spokesman, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, himself a surgeon, psychiatrist and Spanish journalist, said that he is as amazed as anyone else by John Paul’s stamina, particularly since his living and working conditions in Vatican City allow little time or space for exercise and recreation.

“He can swim in the pool at Castelgandolfo in the summertime, but the rest of the year he has only the terrace of the papal apartment to walk on,” Navarro said. “That’s really not enough healthy exercise.”

He added that even when the pontiff was given time for a midday nap during journeys such as this one, he rarely bothered sleeping, but sat up reading books and articles about the country he was visiting.

Asked if the pontiff uses sleeping pills, Navarro said that he does not but that the Vatican physician carries a supply for other members of the papal party who need them.

One of the constants of papal travel is its high cost, and the subject never fails to arouse controversy wherever the Pope goes. The $50-million cost of his trip to Canada two years ago remains the all-time record high. But the $5 million to $6 million that the journey is costing in Australia has struck many here as a bit much.

“To me, this visit is nothing more than a public relations exercise sapping funds which should be going to the needy,” complained a lay teacher in a Sydney Catholic school in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

“It is hypocritical and wasteful and it makes me embarrassed to be a Catholic,” the teacher wrote, withholding her name because she said that owning up to such an opinion right now would probably cost her her job.

But David Balderstone, a Melbourne writer who is a non-practicing Anglican, said he believes that a majority of Australians are too pleased by the visit to care much about the cost.

“Living in Australia can be rather boring, so visits like the Pope’s or the queen’s have a great deal of meaning for us,” Balderstone said. “Besides, the country’s down the tubes economically anyway--what’s another $5 (million) or $6 million?”

Medallions, T-Shirts

To cover a large share of the cost, the Australian Catholic Church set up a marketing program, licensing 120 items such as medallions and T-shirts that say, “Is the Pope a Catholic?” and commemorative cans of beer and bottles of wine. Many of the souvenir items can be bought only at actual papal events, such as his open-air Masses, and sales have been reported off, in part because the souvenir stands have been ordered to close down during the actual religious ceremonies and sell only before and afterward.

“A lot of people wander around during the Mass, you know, and we could double our sales if we could keep selling them,” complained a concessionaire in Hobart, Tasmania, who thought she might be left holding hundreds of unsold T-shirts and papal bookends.

The commercialism has not lacked for critics. The beer sponsor, the South Australian Brewing Co., has come in for especially sharp remarks. Initially, the company sought to put the Pope’s picture on its beer cans, but then it settled for a papal headdress symbol instead when it was suggested that the papal likeness on a beer can might be unseemly.

The company produced 100,000 commemorative “tinnies,” as Australians call their beer cans, and has had orders for them from as far away as New York, said Mike O’Reilly, the company spokesman.

Most controversial has been the decision of the papal trip organizers to schedule a huge beer bust and barbecue at Adelaide’s Victoria Park race track Sunday, immediately after the papal Mass there.

Mass attendance is expected to be high, since only those who go to the religious ceremony will be allowed into the free beer bash, where they also will be served commemorative papal port and red and white wines. The wines, produced by the Jesuit-owned Seven Hills Winery of South Australia, also are being marketed under special license from the papal trip’s fund-raisers.

According to Patrick Boyce, media director for the church planners, the fund-raising marketing group expects to net more than $1 million for the church from the souvenirs, beer and wine and has already raised about $3 million from separate fund appeals in the nation’s parishes.

One of the chief concessionaires licensed by the marketing committee is Glenn Wheatley, Australia’s top rock music festival promoter. To critics of the commercial approach to covering costs of the Pope’s visit, he had this to say:

“People say Jesus Christ never had sponsorship, but he lived 1,986 years ago. The Pope rides in a bulletproof Mercedes-Benz. Who’s going to pay for that?”