Chile’s ‘Senseless Violence’ Assailed; Pope Tours South

Recrimination trailed Pope John Paul II from violence-weary Santiago on Saturday as polarized Chile weighed his unprecedented attempt to unite government foes in a peaceful search for restored democracy.

With the Pope peacefully touring the beautiful Chilean south, his church deplored the “senseless violence” that marked a solemn papal “Mass of national reconciliation” here Friday. Rival accusations of responsibility flew like the rocks and tear gas that crudely punctuated anguished papal calls for peace.

Doctors at the main government center for primary care here reported that 220 worshipers had sought aid after police counterattacked rock-throwing opponents of President Augusto Pinochet at the centerpiece Mass of John Paul’s six-day Chilean visit. Of the total, 66 had wounds that required further treatment, and eight were in intensive care, the doctors said.

National police said that 48 officers were injured, four seriously. Three civilians were wounded, not gravely, by gunfire in the tumult. No one could say for sure who had fired the shots.

All sides agreed that Friday’s violence, the worst to stalk the Pope in 33 foreign trips, was calculatingly triggered by several hundred organized youths in a congregation estimated by Santiago newspapers at over half a million.

The church was non-judgmental in denouncing what Santiago Cardinal Juan Francisco Fresno called “an assault against liberty.”

“A few hundred people have attempted to impede hundreds of thousands of the faithful from exercising the first of human rights: the right to publicly express their faith,” Fresno said in a coldly furious statement countersigned by the bishop-president of the Chilean Episcopal Conference.

The Pinochet government itself made no formal accusation, but national police Gen. Idelberto Duarte told Chilean reporters that the violence was the work of “subversive delinquents” belonging to the outlawed Communist Party and the Revolutionary Left Movement, a small, clandestine, Marxist extremist group that has been a principal target of government repression since Pinochet came to power 13 years ago.

The accusation was echoed in government-controlled newspapers. Commentators sympathetic to the government appeared promptly on the state’s television station to stress how the insult to the Pope underlined Pinochet’s welcome message to John Paul that Chile was the target of an international Communist conspiracy.

Chile’s disciplined Communist Party, the largest in the hemisphere outside Cuba, and a Marxist branch of the Chilean Socialist Party were among political groups of left, center and right that pledged to the Pope on Friday they would seek a peaceful transition to democracy.

Communists Deny Blame

“The Communist Party has no responsibility in these condemnable acts,” said a statement Saturday signed by Communist Jose Sanfuentes and Marxist Socialist German Correa, who were among 19 political leaders to meet with the Pope on Friday night.

“We have no doubt that cold analysis will conclude with clarity the real origin of this provocation. The country has known in other opportunities how provocations are undertaken and how, later, millionaire publicity campaigns are orchestrated to attempt to blame opposition forces,” the statement said.

Gabriel Valdes, president of the Christian Democratic Party, the country’s largest, was also chary of apportioning blame. “In this country, many things are not explained,” he said.

Like Vatican spokesmen, who stressed the unprecedented nature of the Pope’s intervention in domestic politics, Valdes called the late night Friday meeting with the Pope “historic.” It was the first time since Pinochet’s 1973 coup against elected Marxist President Salvador Allende that leaders across the Chilean political spectrum had met in the same room, Valdes noted.

In a letter submitted to the Pope before the meeting--the church-exacted price of admission--parties from the conservative right to the Marxist left pledged to “dedicate our effort to achieve national reconciliation and reach a peaceful transition to democracy.”

Although the papal initiative cannot have failed to discomfit Pinochet, Friday’s brief letter lacked specific proposals for joint action.

Proposal Rejected

Pinochet, who seeks to extend his rule for another decade, rejected out of hand a more detailed, church-inspired transition proposal by moderate political parties in 1985.

Despite broad civilian applause for the papal initiative Saturday, it was not clear, amid universal preoccupation with violence that insulted the pontiff and outraged his church, if Pinochet’s opponents could muster either the will or the ability to exploit the opening forged by an anguished John Paul.