Pope Gives Ortega a Chilly Greeting, Backs Peace Plan

Pope John Paul II fully backed the Central American peace plan today but gave Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega an unusually chilly reception, lecturing him on the need for democracy in his country.

The Pope received Ortega privately for 30 minutes in his study and discussed prospects for peace in Central America.

It was their first meeting since March 4, 1983, when supporters of the ruling Sandinistas outraged the Pope by shouting political slogans during a Mass in Managua.

The encounter in the Vatican followed years of tension between the Holy See and Nicaragua.

Businesslike Greeting

Vatican officials and reporters who witnessed Ortega arrive at the threshold of the papal study said the serious-looking Pope shook hands with him in a businesslike manner; said, “Good day,” in Spanish and brusquely walked ahead of his guest into the private meeting.

The Pope usually smiles broadly when meeting his guests and motions for them to enter the study in front of him.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said after the meeting that the Pope told Ortega the Central American peace plan must find “an effective application, in each of its parts, without overlooking any single element.”

The plan, signed by five Central American nations in August, bars foreign aid to insurgents and calls for wide democratic reforms, amnesties and cease-fires in the region’s three guerrilla wars.

Pope Stresses Democracy

President Reagan is clashing with Congress over his request for $36.25 million in fresh aid to the Contra rebels fighting Ortega’s government.

Navarro would not comment on whether Ortega asked the Pope for Vatican intercession with Washington to stop the Contra aid.

Navarro said the Pope stressed to Ortega “the right of populations to live in a political regime based on the principles of true democracy.”

A Vatican official who asked not to be named said of the meeting: “Ortega listened more than he talked.”

One person conspicuously absent from the entourage was Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto--one of three priests who hold Cabinet posts in the Nicaraguan government in open defiance of a Vatican order for them to step down.