THE PAPAL VISIT : ON THE PAPAL ROUTE : Many Factors Get Blame for Small Crowds

There was not much doing in this border town on Saturday. The two bridges that span the green waters of the Rio Grande were all but empty, traversed mainly by pedestrians shuffling across to shop and by occasional carloads of tourists.

The somnolent scene, played out under an oppressive sun, was noteworthy in that Saturday was supposed to have brought tens of thousands of Mexicans surging across the bridges on their way to San Antonio and a Mass to be celebrated outdoors today by Pope John Paul II.

“We have a party and no one wants to come,” said Alfonso R. De Leon, Jr., the Immigration and Naturalization Service port director here. Less than one-tenth of the 150,000 San Antonio-bound Mexicans the INS was prepared to process had materialized by evening.

The relative trickle of border-crossing pilgrims was just one more surprise for a papal tour that has been marked by unexpectedly low turnouts. John Paul’s 10-day swing across America is only one-third finished; nonetheless, people so far have not flocked to see the pontiff in numbers anywhere near those projected by some tour planners and law enforcement officials.

The one explanation voiced most frequently blames overblown predictions of enormous crowds and calamitous traffic tie-ups. The dire forecasts, this theory holds, have frightened off would-be spectators, re-creating a phenomenon experienced in Los Angeles during the 1984 Olympic Games.

Also cited is the hot, sticky weather that has dogged the Pope since his arrival Thursday in Florida. The sultry heat seemingly has been interrupted only by untimely outbursts of rain and lightning. A thunderstorm chased away the biggest crowd yet assembled for the Pope, an estimated 230,000 people gathered for an outdoor Mass in Miami, and threatening skies Saturday in New Orleans were said to have contributed to less-than-expected crowds along the papal procession route.

Television could be another factor. Saturation coverage has been offered in every city, allowing people concerned about traffic and jostling crowds to take the easy way out and watch the Pope from their living rooms.

There also have been a few suggestions that the Pope may have lost a bit of his pizazz as a public draw. Nine years ago, when he toured triumphantly through New York and other U.S. cities, John Paul was only in the second year of his reign, a resonant and novel voice of leadership in the world. By now this widely traveled pontiff is a far more familiar presence, and the shelf life of celebrity status is notoriously short.

Attraction Wears Off

“It’s only natural,” Thomas Davis, a Catholic priest, said here Saturday, “that the attraction would start to wear off. After all, he’s been on the road for nine years now.”

Davis, who himself was skipping the trip to San Antonio so that his junior clergy could go, offered other, more prosaic reasons for the absence of Mexicans headed for what had been billed the largest outdoor Mass of the Pope’s tour: hot weather, the prospect of dangerous, dusty conditions at the Mass site and a new law in Texas that requires all drivers to have liability insurance.

The new insurance requirement also was considered the main culprit by immigration officials at the border. While the law itself might not seem extraordinarily onerous, there were a spate of reports in recent weeks that Draconian enforcement measures would be taken, presenting travelers with the dark vision of roadblocks and arbitrary stops by Texas Rangers.

Father Jose Antonio Rodriguez, the priest at Santo Nino, a Catholic church across the border in Nuevo Laredo, said the insurance law was just one more hurdle in a difficult course thrown up for Mexicans who want to travel into the United States, hurdles that convinced the vast majority of his parishioners to pass on an opportunity to see the Pope.

‘Too Many Requirements’

“The enthusiasm is there,” he said, “but there are too many requirements--visas, passports, green cards, and now, insurance.”

The reluctance was in surprising contrast to the dramatic response the Pope drew in 1979 when he went to Mexico, a response typical of that he receives in the Third World.

The people of Rodriguez’s parish were part of a migration of perhaps 2 million people to Monterrey, about 150 miles south of here. “They spent the whole night outside in the winter, in the cold, in the rain, without food,” the priest recalled. “The old people were the ones who suffered most. But it was important that we were there. This was in Mexico, not in the United States.”

Those involved in staging this tour said it was wrong for public officials to continually emphasize their concerns about traffic jams, heat strokes and other potential hazards presumably posed by an outing to watch John Paul roll by in his Popemobile or say Mass on some faraway altar.

William Ryan, a spokesman for the U.S. Catholic Conference that is hosting John Paul’s visit, said on Saturday that such “overkill” might have caused a poor showing along the route of the initial papal motorcade in Miami.

A quarter of a million spectators had been anticipated by civic officials, but the size of the crowd was well below half that number. Similarly, a youth rally in the Superdome on Saturday drew only 50,000 youngsters. Preparations had been made for 72,000. Turnout for the papal parade down Canal Street also was low.

“We anticipated a much larger crowd,” said New Orleans Police Department spokesman David Adams, who attributed the sparse turnout to heat in the mid-80s and 97% humidity.

Adams would not give an estimate for the number of spectators along the 1 1/2-mile parade route. However, nowhere were spectators more than three or four deep, he said. By comparison, Mardi Gras crowds are 20 to 25 deep and draw up to 300,000 people.

Worst Showing So Far

The worst showing so far has been in Columbia, S.C., a Bible Belt city with a minuscule Catholic population. Early in the planning, projections of as many as 800,000 visitors had been advanced. These figures were scaled down to 250,000 shortly before the Pope’s arrival. But in the aftermath of the visit, disappointed officials said that only 100,000 had come to Columbia to see the Pope.

Ryan said that the various projections were those of city officials, not of the papal visit planners. “We don’t make predictions,” he said.

Ryan said that the church was pleased so far with the Pope’s showing, and he predicted crowds would soon begin to build. One happy development for the church has been that expected big protests have not materialized yet, either.

What all of this portends for Los Angeles cannot be known until Tuesday, when the Pope is scheduled to arrive. The coordinator of the two-day visit, however, said he is dismayed by the low turnouts elsewhere, and concerned that city officials have focused too much on avoiding traffic jams rather than on making it easier for spectators to see the Pope.

The only public event in Los Angeles is also the first, the Pope’s 7.2-mile procession through downtown. Officials have announced a plan to close down several major streets, and have asked downtown workers to take the day off if possible.

“The assumption has been made that people will just come out and see the Pope,” said Walter McGuire, coordinator of the Los Angeles leg of the visit, “and that assumption is wrong. There is a sort of psychology to why people come to events. People who come to an event need to have certain information--when to come and where to park and why--and they need to be invited, especially when they can see it on television.”

Worry About Hardships

McGuire, who organized the Olympic Torch Relay, said people worry too much about the hardships special events can create, and lose sight of the potential experience: “So what if you have to sit in a traffic jam? You do that every morning when you go to work. You can come out and see the Pope and have fun. You will probably never be able to do it again.”

Of course, the Pope still has six more cities to visit, and the success of his pastoral excursion cannot be measured strictly by the size of the crowds he draws. Many of those who have lined his path and attended his Masses have talked of the spiritual benefits of the experience.

And, despite all hardships, regardless of the scant activity on the bridges here Saturday, it was possible to find people making their way to San Antonio. At the border station during the hot afternoon stood Sister Graciela Ochoa Fernandez, a 48-year-old Franciscan nun. Her white and blue habit seemed exceedingly well-pressed, given that she had just ridden on a bus all night from Mexico City on her way to see the Pope.

For her, there was no question about going, or about whether the difficult journey would bear fruit. “It will be,” she said, “a fountain of grace and benediction.”

Staff writers Frank Sotomayor and Louis Sahagun in New Orleans contributed to this story.