Weather Adds a S. African Stop to Pontiff’s Itinerary

With mountains all around, his cockpit wrapped in cloud, fuel levels troubling and airport navigational aids chillingly silent, Capt. Robin Cartwright had seen enough. Lifting the nose of Air Zimbabwe Flight 511, he broke for daylight.

So began globe-trotting Pope John Paul II’s most bizarre trip in a decade of foreign travel. By the time it had ended near midnight Wednesday, exhausted veterans of the Pope’s 39 trips abroad could recall few adventures to rival it.

Aides fluttered, reporters cursed, sirens wailed, but the Pope never faltered.

“This isn’t on the program,” he said with a grin as Flight 511 clawed for altitude.

The 68-year-old pontiff started the day in one country, Botswana, and had lunch in a second, South Africa, that he had decided not to visit. He finally arrived in a third, Lesotho, where terrorists holding a busload of hostages were demanding to see him. A gun battle erupted not long after he reached Lesotho.

The Pope had ridden for five hours, unnoticed, through the majestic emptiness of the South African countryside. Then this priest whose Masses have attracted millions drove deep into the outback on a bitter cold night to pray with fewer than 1,000 of the faithful.

Early in the day, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro had told reporters: “There is a storm in Lesotho. We may be late in leaving. We want to be sure that we can land, since the alternative. . . .”

The incomplete sentence got the laugh it had invited.

Lesotho, the tiny mountain kingdom that was the Pope’s destination on Day 5 of his African trip, is completely surrounded by South Africa. And John Paul, as he is at no pains to hide, abhors the South African government’s apartheid policy.

His decision to skip South Africa but to hold out the prospect of a future visit has been the most discussed political aspect of this trip.

As Cartwright lifted Flight 511 from Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, Vatican aides distributed the text of speeches the Pope was to deliver in Lesotho. In the first of them, John Paul was to have told South African pilgrims to Lesotho that he looked forward to visiting them at home “in the not too distant future.”

In fact, John Paul would be visiting South Africa just two hours later.

Plane Tosses in Clouds

At 10 a.m., about 15 minutes before its scheduled arrival, Flight 511 dropped into heavy rain and clouds. It stayed there, tossing fitfully, for half an hour that began to feel like an eternity to some of the 70 journalists in the party. A handful were ill; one wound up in a South African hospital.

By custom, no announcements are made on a papal charter flight, and the silence grew heavier as Flight 511 plunged on, the Pope alone at the front, his retinue in a compartment behind, reporters farther back.

Nobody had told Cartwright that two of the three electronic navigational aids at the Maseru airport were inoperative.

“The airport’s in a bowl, with mountains 3,000 or 4,000 feet above the field,” he said later. “It’s like landing in the palm of your hand.”

As the buffeting continued and wings vanished from view of passengers in the cabin, Giorgio Reali, an Alitalia executive responsible for the Pope’s air travel, disappeared into the cockpit.

‘I Didn’t Dare Go Lower’

“I was on a direct approach at 7,600 feet, the lowest safe altitude, but we were blind, and without the navigational aids and with mountains ahead, and I didn’t dare go any lower,” Cartwright said.

At 10:28 Reali bolted from the cockpit and consulted with Vatican officials. Then a Zimbabwean flight attendant ambled back into the journalists’ cabin looking impossibly composed.

“Jo’burg,” she said with a saucy grin.

“It was the nearest safe airport,” Cartwright said.

Navarro said: “The Holy Father had finished his breviary and was reading a philosophy book when I told him. He smiled and said, ‘This isn’t in the program.’ ”

At 11:09 a.m., Flight 511 slid gently into Jan Smuts Airport at Johannesburg. It was an unenviable first and tinged with irony.

In 1985, the Pope had to skip Ft. Simpson in Canada because of bad weather, and in 1986 his plane was diverted to Naples because of a freak snowstorm in Rome. But Wednesday marked the first time that John Paul had been shut out of a country.

In August, the South African government had asked the Pope to stop for a Mass at Jan Smuts Airport during his African trip, but the Vatican had refused.

Decided to Drive

With the weather worsening at Maseru, Vatican officials decided to continue by road to Lesotho.

While John Paul lunched with Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, who had sped to the airport, the South Africans arranged a car for the Pope and buses for his entourage.

For five hours, John Paul, accompanied by Navarro, rode behind a police escort through flat, straw-colored farmland. Rarely in his decade as Pope can John Paul have made such a long road journey without being on public display.

“He read,” Navarro said. “He prayed. He looked at the scenery.”

It was already dark and cold when the Pope crossed a narrow bridge from South Africa into Lesotho. At the shabby border station there were people who cared, believers who had waited patiently for a Pope who came nine hours late.

John Paul sprang from his car to greet them. Then, while Vatican aides wondered what would happen next, the Pope decided.

The motorcade sped on through the African night to a soggy field at the oldest Catholic mission in Lesotho, a place called Roma. There the Bishop of Rome climaxed his longest day with his head bent in prayer.