Preaches Marital Fidelity in Swaziland : Pope Challenges Polygamist King

Challenging traditional tribal values in this small African kingdom, Pope John Paul II on Friday preached marital fidelity and sexual equality to its young polygamist ruler.

The Pope, nearing the end of his 10-day visit to southern Africa, stopped in this New Jersey-size nation of 700,000 people for a Mass and a meeting with 20-year-old King Mswati III.

Mswati, who was finishing high school in Britain at the time of his coronation in 1986, arrived in a limousine behind a noisy cavalcade after the Mass had begun at a soccer stadium here.

One of 68 Sons

Mswati, known to his subjects as ngwenyama , or “the lion,” rules jointly with the Queen Mother, who is called ndiovukazi , or “the great she-elephant.” Mswati is the second youngest of the 68 acknowledged sons of King Sobhuza II, who ruled for more than 60 years in this agrarian land wedged between South Africa and Mozambique.

Swaziland, one of Africa’s smallest and most politically stable states, became independent 20 years ago but is dominated by South Africa.

Government officials at the Mass said they could not discuss the king’s marital status, but Swazi sources reported rumors that Mswati had recently taken a fifth wife. He chose his first, a civil servant’s daughter, two years ago after studying a videotape of 3,000 Swazi maidens at a festival, the sources said.

As the king and Queen Mother listened from the grandstand, John Paul portrayed Christ as a “king of peace” who had restored brotherhood to life on Earth.

‘God Is Their Common Father’

“All people are brothers and sisters to each other because God is their common father,” the Pope said in his homily.

Extending the concept to marriage, he said that “a monogamous marital union provides the foundation upon which to build a stable family.” There was no apparent reaction from the royal party.

“Any forms of disregard for the equal dignity of men and women must be seen as serious contradictions of the truth that Christ, the king of peace, has brought into the world,” John Paul added.

On Friday night, the pontiff arrived in war-torn Mozambique, the last stop of his five-nation trip through southern Africa, where he urged that country’s Marxist government to negotiate with rightist rebels.

Completing the 39th foreign journey of his 10-year papacy, John Paul travels into the back lands of Mozambique today before a round of ceremonies and meetings Sunday with government officials in Maputo, the capital. He is to return to Rome on Monday.