Papal Visit Will Face Propaganda Battle in Chile

As he begins a new pilgrim’s odyssey to South America, Pope John Paul II has become a political football, a white-robed man for all passions, in a gritty propaganda war here between the government of President Augusto Pinochet and his opponents.

The Chilean Catholic Church, the most forthright and credible defender of human rights in a repressive dictatorship, awaits the Pope as a “messenger of life.” In a government view, though, he is the “messenger of peace.” Each side reads its own slogan its own way.

Joined by government foes ranging from the conservative right to the violent Marxist left, the church portrays John Paul as a figure whose preoccupation is human dignity and economic and social well-being, basic rights of life that the opposition says Pinochet has trampled.

Unable themselves to shake the stiff-necked general’s grip or to short-circuit his preparations to remain in office for another decade, opposition forces somewhat forlornly hope the Pope will achieve what they themselves have failed to accomplish during 13 years of dictatorship.

In previous trips to politically volatile countries, the Pope has tended to speak forcefully in favor of basic human rights but to carefully skirt any suggestion that he is taking sides in domestic matters.

Vest pocket anti-Pinochet protests in the form of chants and banners intended to win air time, government irritation and papal attention seem inevitable, especially during outdoor ceremonies here in Santiago that will attract huge crowds.

The terrorist wing of Chile’s Moscow-following Communist Party says it will observe the visit peacefully, but what is not clear is how the police will react to any anti-Pinochet protests. Normally, they are quick with clubs and tear gas.

Coasting toward another anniversary of a 1973 coup that toppled an elected Marxist president and ended unbroken decades of political pluralism, the Pinochet regime dwells on the Pope’s image as a man of peace. Government propaganda refers not only to papal mediation that resolved a century-old border dispute with neighboring Argentina, but also implicitly acquaints the pontiff with the official image of Pinochet, who says he saved Chile from Marxist chaos.

In polarized Chile, every papal gesture, every word, every inflection will be parsed for significance and political advantage. Chile is the tough and tense core of a two-week sojourn through South America.

Uruguay Is First Stop

The 66-year-old pontiff leaves Rome tonight for tiny Uruguay, a country so determinedly secular that Holy Week is officially called Tourism Week.

In Montevideo on Tuesday, John Paul will join Argentine and Chilean foreign ministers in celebrating a treaty apportioning islands and waters in the Beagle Channel off Tierra del Fuego, resolving differences that brought the two countries close to war in 1978.

Next week, the Pope will tour exhaustively through Argentina, where some of the hemisphere’s most conservative bishops are desperately counterattacking likely congressional approval of that country’s first divorce legislation.

In between the visits to Uruguay and Argentina will come the Pope’s travels in Chile, including 27 ceremonies in eight cities over 108 hours starting Wednesday afternoon. So profound are the differences between church and state here that it is almost as though two different Popes were coming. Counterpoint to starched yellow-and-white papal standards and national colors on government buildings are short-lived anti-Pinochet wall sermons like the one that read: “Holy Father, take him home with you.”

Church-State Distrust

Mutual distrust runs deep. The government and the church have each made their own preparations, cooperating as little as possible. Consequently there are two of almost everything. The church will show the Pope a young woman leftist burned by an army patrol. The government will present him with a young woman who lost both legs in a terrorist bombing.

There’s a state radio and television network and one run by the church. It is expected that the state network will cut away from any disturbances. The church network will not. The church is issuing small yellow press cards. The government issues big green press cards.

A contingent of 15,000 specially trained police is paralleled by 20,000 so-called “papal guards,” yellow-and-white-vested Catholic youths who will post themselves as a buffer between police and the faithful.

In sideshows to the papal extravaganza, more than 200 political prisoners are on a well-publicized hunger strike, a U.S.-based human rights group has held a press conference to renew allegations of torture against the government and a former Marxist foreign minister sneaked back from exile, claiming to have ridden across the Andes on a mule. He was promptly shipped into internal exile to a remote village in the Chilean south, there to receive a lengthy procession of Chilean and foreign reporters.

Urged End of Abuses

The church futilely insists that the papal visit is just pastoral but is at no pains to hide its enmity for Pinochet.

In a pastoral letter last month, the permanent commission of the Episcopal Conference of Chilean Bishops called bluntly for a democratic political opening and an end to torture and other abuses.

To which Pinochet replied sarcastically: “When I read the news in the paper, I thought it was the inaugural statement of a new political party. It would be better if they spent 90% of their time praying.”

There will be a lot of praying in Chile this week, but there will be just as much politicking as the temporal vies with the spiritual for the focus of a Pope passing across the strained but static local stage.