PAPAL VISIT UPDATE

Despite vigorous objections from a union of flight attendants, Trans World Airlines will be the official carrier for Pope John Paul II’s visit to the United States this September.

The decision was made by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops based on a recommendation by a three-member committee headed by Archbishop Roger Mahony of Los Angeles. The committee met with representatives of TWA management and the Independent Federation of Flight Attendants.

TWA and the union have been embroiled in a lengthy dispute. The union held a strike for three months last year, returning after new TWA management hired 2,400 replacements for the striking workers.

“It is our unanimous judgment that although there is still some labor dissatisfaction at TWA with some IFFA members . . . and some outstanding issues in contention which need to be settled through either the courts or mediation-negotiation, applicable Catholic social justice principles and the church’s teachings on workers’ rights are being met adequately at TWA,” Mahony said.

But union President Vicki Frankovich said the union “cannot condone this decision. It ignores the immorality of the situation at TWA. . . . The company has devastated the lives of 4,300 flight attendants by keeping them from their jobs.”

Union leaders have said they will picket the Pope when he makes his second pastoral visit to the United States Sept. 10-19 if the papal party and the press use chartered TWA planes for the nine-city tour.

The bishops’ decision to use TWA--which was also the carrier for the papal party during John Paul’s 1979 U.S. trip--was first announced in January. The union objected in April, but the general secretary of the bishops’ conference affirmed the decision in May after consulting legal counsel and experts in Catholic social teaching. After another review by the three bishops in June, the decision to charter TWA was made final.

An ad hoc group called Greet the Pope Committee announced plans for a nightlong candlelight vigil outside St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, where the pontiff is scheduled to spend his two nights in Los Angeles.

Ann Marie Capuzzi, co-chairwoman of Greet the Pope Committee, said, “We want him to know that people protest his views on certain relevant social issues and his attempt to make them public policy as they infringe on the civil liberties of many groups of people.”

She said the coalition includes gays and lesbians, feminists, pro-choice advocates, AIDS prevention workers, liberation theologians, atheists and others who say the church meddles in American politics.

“What can I say?” responded Father Gregory Coiro, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “This is the United States where people are used to expressing their viewpoints, particularly when they feel very strongly about something.”

Capuzzi said protesters plan to gather at City Hall on Sept. 15, the Pope’s first night in Los Angeles, for an interfaith service. They will then walk to the cathedral a few blocks away when the Pope returns from celebrating Mass at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Evangelist Billy Graham, asked to share a Sept. 11 speaking engagement with Pope John Paul II at an ecumenical service in Columbia, S.C., has turned down the invitation because of a longstanding commitment to be in China and not because of potential criticism by conservative Protestants, a Graham aide said.

Graham, a Southern Baptist, is holding a crusade in Denver and will lead another series of evangelistic meetings in Helsinki, Finland, from Aug. 25-30 before going on to the People’s Republic of China, according to Graham spokesman Larry Ross.

“It just came down to a matter of scheduling,” Ross said in a telephone interview this week.

The Rev. Adrian Rogers of Memphis, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has declined to attend the interdenominational meeting with the Pope, and some fundamentalist groups have openly opposed the pontiff’s five-hour stopover in Columbia.

Ross said the trip was “very important to Graham’s wife, Ruth, who was born and reared in China by missionary parents.” Graham said he has “always respected Pope John Paul II’s strong stands for morality and justice, which have won the respect of people around the world, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.”