S.F. Archdiocese Only Halfway to Meeting Budget for Pope’s Visit

The San Francisco Archdiocese has managed to raise less than half the $3.3 million budgeted for Pope John Paul II’s visit here less than a month from now.

“Everyone wants us to be farther along, but it’s hard to tell why people aren’t giving or coming forward to be helpful,” said James Armstrong, the archdiocese’s director of development and its chief fund-raiser.

Fund-raising efforts have collected “a little above $1.5 million,” Armstrong said on Tuesday. Some archdiocese fund-raisers have blamed the political fallout over the Pope’s visit with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, a former Nazi.

If the entire $3.3 million doesn’t materialize by the time of the Pope’s Sept. 17-18 visit, Armstrong said, the funding campaign will continue after he leaves. And archdiocese spokesman Miles Riley said adjustments are being made in some of the provisions for the Pope’s trip.

“This is the city of St. Francis, and we’re doing a St. Francis--a little begging and borrowing,” he said.

Among the areas in which Riley is cutting:making fewer copies of news releases, reducing the number of telephones for reporters and providing outlets for personal computers rather than supplying 500 typewriters.