Pope Assails Chilean Regime on Rights : Begins Latin Tour, Says Church Must Follow Philippine Example

Bluntly characterizing the military regime of Chile’s President Augusto Pinochet as “dictatorial,” Pope John Paul II said Tuesday that it is necessary for the church to perform the same mission in Chile as it did in the downfall of Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

“Some would want to separate us from this mission,” said the pontiff as he flew across the Atlantic at the outset of a two-week visit to Uruguay, Chile and Argentina.

“These people would want to tell us, ‘Stay in the sacristy, do nothing else.’ They say it is politics, but it is not politics,” he continued, adding that it would be the death of the church to withdraw from the battle for human rights.

Asked specifically if he thought the church in Chile could carry out the same mission as that in the Philippines, where Cardinal Jaime Sin led opposition to Marcos and nuns marched with protesters against heavily armed troops, John Paul said, “I think it is not only possible but necessary, because this is part of the pastoral mission of the church.”

The pontiff spoke with unusual candor to reporters aboard his chartered Boeing 747, which landed in Montevideo on a one-night stopover before proceeding to Santiago, Chile, today for what is likely to be the most tension-filled six days of his fifth papal visit to South America.

The traveling Vatican party had been warned to expect anti-government human rights demonstrations by the regime’s opponents as well as attempts by the Pinochet regime to capitalize on the Pope’s presence and popularity. But the regime could take little comfort from John Paul’s stern remarks on the plane. Instead, he appeared to be warning Pinochet and encouraging his opponents.

The Roman Catholic Church and the military regime have long been at odds in Chile, whose government’s human rights record is one of the worst--and best-documented--in Latin America. Recently, the country’s Catholic bishops called bluntly for an end to torture and other human rights abuses and a return to democracy.

Pinochet derided the bishops’ plea as “the inaugural statement of a new political party” and added that “it would be better if they spent 90% of their time praying.”

The General’s Gibe

The Pope was likely referring to that gibe by the Chilean general when he refused to keep the church “in the sacristy.”

But when asked to contrast the regimes in Chile and his native Poland, which is under strict Communist rule by Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the pontiff softened somewhat his characterization of the Pinochet regime.

“We are going to encounter (in Chile) a regime which at the moment is dictatorial, but which is transitory by its own definition,” the Pope said, pointing out that by contrast the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe offer no hope for democratic change. He called the struggle for freedom in Poland “much more demanding and difficult.”

When asked if he believes that his visit to Chile will help bring democracy there, the Pope said, “I am not the evangelizer of democracy; I am the evangelizer of the Gospel.”

But he added, “To the Gospel message belongs, of course, all the problems of human rights, and if democracy means human rights, it also belongs to the message of the church.”

The pontiff is expected to forthrightly express his strong feelings on human rights when he meets privately with Pinochet on Thursday morning. He is expected to assert them more publicly Thursday night when he prays for the regime’s victims while presiding over a massive youth rally in the same Santiago stadium where Pinochet’s military junta held thousands of its alleged enemies during the coup d’etat that brought it to power in 1973, toppling the democratically elected regime of Marxist President Salvador Allende.

The Pope also plans to meet leaders of the anti-Pinochet opposition Friday, according to Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls, and again is likely to speak out on human rights.

In explaining the pontiff’s remarks concerning the mission of the church in Chile, Poland and the Philippines, Navarro told reporters that John Paul “was speaking in a broad sense and in the context of fighting for human rights. Human rights is something that belongs to the Gospel; it belongs to the Catholic Church.”

In his opening remarks in Montevideo, where a somewhat repressive military regime gave way two years ago to a democratically elected civilian government, the pontiff spoke of the need for “structures that are more human, more just, more respectful of the rights of the person.”

However, his chief aim in Uruguay, and one of the basic reasons for undertaking the current South American trip, was to join Argentine and Chilean foreign ministers Tuesday night in a celebration of the signing of the Treaty of Montevideo. The treaty, mediated by John Paul as the first major foreign policy initiative of his eight-year papacy, resolved differences over the Beagle Channel off Tierra del Fuego that brought the two countries to the brink of war in 1978.

On Saturday, the pontiff will go near the disputed territory when he visits the cold and windy Chilean town of Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan, just north of the Beagle Channel and one of the southernmost landfalls on the continent.