THE PAPAL VISIT : Protest Groups to Let Pope Know How They Feel

As Los Angeles city and church officials gear up to welcome Pope John Paul II to Los Angeles next month, a far different kind of planning is under way among gays and feminists who hope to use the pontiff’s two-day stay to demonstrate their grievances against the church.

For the last several months, protest groups have been meeting in church halls, homes and community centers to scrutinize maps, pour over the papal itinerary and debate strategy for rallies and vigils during the Pope’s visit. Most will be protesting the church’s teaching that homosexual behavior is “immoral” and church polices that forbid abortion, artificial contraception and women in the clergy. Others will use the papal visit to condemn abortion.

Candlelight Vigil

“We may actually have some groups who may be in conflict with each other and we may want to make sure we avoid any antagonism,” said Police Cmdr. George Morrison. “We have to plan for any eventuality, but I do not anticipate problems at this time.”

Protest organizers say they have distributed more than 16,000 leaflets calling for demonstrations against church policies on women and homosexuals. The protests will include a Sept. 15 rally and nondenominational religious service in front of City Hall and a nearby candlelight vigil a block away from St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, where the Pope will stay. Police originally had opposed permitting the City Hall rally on security grounds.

Although protests near sites where the Pope will be present are expected to be peaceful, demonstrators warn of possible conflicts at abortion clinics. Anti-abortion activists throughout the nation have threatened to block the entrances to clinics in each of the cities the Pope will visit.

A national coalition opposed to freedom-of-choice on abortion has already sent 90 letters to clinics asking that abortions not be performed while the Pope is in their cities and warning that anti-choice demonstrators will “interpose themselves between the abortionists and their intended victims.”

Marya Krestyn, 36, a San Gabriel homemaker and anti-abortion activist, said there will be a “nonviolent prayer vigil” on Sept. 15 in front of at least one Los Angeles clinic.

“Some people may kneel and pray and obstruct entrance that way,” Krestyn said.

Pro-choice advocates plan to go to the clinics to help escort women past the protesters. Carol Downer, executive director of the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers, said enough escorts should be available to ensure access to the clinics.

Clinics Targeted

“Women coming in will have as little disruption as possible,” she said.

Clinics in San Francisco and Monterey, where the Pope will also visit, have been targeted as well. “Since the police departments are going to be tied up with the people demonstrating against the Pope, the clinics won’t be able to have the protection they normally have,” said Camille Giglio, a housewife who is planning to demonstrate against a San Francisco clinic.

Lt. Dan Cooke, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman, said he does not expect the protests to lead to violence at the Los Angeles clinics, although the demonstrations “may result in having a (police) car go by and take a look.”

“We’ve had these kinds of demonstrations on a number of prior occasions,” Cooke said. “Normally, most people in this city when they protest, they do it in a lawful fashion, and if they don’t they go to jail.”

The Los Angeles protests will be among demonstrations planned in each of the nine U.S. cities the Pope will visit during his American tour, with everyone from American Indians to fundamentalist Christians threatening to stage their particular complaints against the church while John Paul II is in town.

In celebration of “Women’s Equality Day” on Wednesday, about 50 feminists demonstrated in front of the Catholic archdiocese headquarters in Los Angeles to protest church policies on women. The protest, the first of a series of feminist demonstrations that will precede the Pope’s arrival, was part of a national effort to celebrate the anniversary of women’s suffrage.

Los Angeles police initially opposed granting a permit to a group called the Greet the Pope Committee--a coalition of gays, feminists, atheists and reproductive rights advocates--for the Sept. 15 rally outside City Hall. In an appearance before the City Council on Wednesday, Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon cited unspecified security concerns in opposing a permit and told reporters that the rally could make it difficult for the Pope to get through the downtown area and back to St. Vibiana’s that evening.

The council gave the group permission to use city electricity during the rally and decided that a permit would not be required to use the City Hall steps. Vernon said he was satisfied.

Supporting Groups

Charles Palmer, 23, a spokesman for the Greet the Pope Committee, said the group’s rally and prayer service at City Hall will attract advocates of separation of church and state, lesbian and gay rights and population control. Groups supporting the committee include the California National Organization for Women, Zero Population Growth, the Gay and Lesbian Freethought Forum and Atheists United, organizers said.

Leaders in the Los Angeles Jewish community said they know of no plans to hold separate demonstrations to protest the Pope’s June 25 meeting with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, accused of complicity in Nazi war crimes. Since meeting Waldheim, the Pope has written a conciliatory letter about Jewish sufferings during World War II and scheduled a Sept. 1 meeting at the Vatican with Jewish leaders.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Los Angeles, said a national petition campaign calling on the Vatican to recognize the state of Israel is under way. The signatures will be presented to the Vatican while the Pope is in the United States, Hier said.

Dignity, a gay and lesbian Catholic organization, also has planned no demonstrations for the Pope’s Los Angeles visit. Lisa Bohm, 25, vice president of Dignity Los Angeles, said the group declined to join the “Greet the Pope” protest because some of the committee’s literature seemed ill-informed.

“We do have a very good relationship with the archdiocese here in L.A., and that was also part of the reason we decided not to protest,” Bohm said.

Dignity will hold a prayer service in a Catholic Church the evening before the Pope’s arrival. Dignity chapters elsewhere in the nation have been ousted from churches, but local chapters have been allowed to meet on archdiocesan property, Bohm said. Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony “is actually a very understanding man,” she said.

Women for Change in the Church, a group of mostly Catholic feminists, will hold a candlelight vigil near St. Vibiana’s Cathedral on Sept. 15 and carry banners that stress the “voicelessness and invisibility” of Catholic women, during a demonstration the next morning outside the Mission Hills seminary where the Pope will address American bishops.

Staff writer Scott Harris contributed to this article.