Pope, the Frequent Traveler, Starting 9-Day African Trip

An aide to Pope John Paul II imagines that the Pope has a private map of the world on which all the countries he has visited are carefully colored in, and that in idle moments the pontiff looks mostly at the inviting blanks.

The map is doubtless apocryphal, but the musing is pertinent, for it is spring, and by now, everybody around the Vatican knows what that means.

This morning, the Pope, his white skirts neatly pressed, his sturdy brown loafers brightly buffed, begins another year of travel.

It is Africa again: nine days and 36 speeches on a French island and in three of the poorest young nations on earth--Madagascar, Malawi and Zambia.

Fifth African Visit

This is the fifth papal visit to a continent where Roman Catholicism is growing quickly. By the time the trip ends May 6, two dozen African countries will have been stamped with the papal yellow and white since John Paul’s first African journey in 1980.

“I think the Pope realizes that Africa needs him,” his spokesman, Joaquin Navarro, said. “More than ever, the Christian spirit is useful in Africa, certainly from the religious point of view, but also from other concerns of the faith like human rights and peace in society.”

From adventuresome missionary beginnings a century ago, the African church now counts 75 million faithful. In 1900, there were 10 million Christians in Africa. By 2000, there will be nearly 400 million, about a quarter of them Catholic.

One of John Paul’s messages is that it is time for the African church to stand on its own feet. Already there are 17 African cardinals and 480 African bishops, but the church in Africa still relies mainly on missionaries, priests and nuns from Europe and the United States. Of 570 priests in Zambia, only 114 are African, although eight of the nine bishops are Zambians. Of 930 nuns in Zambia, 457 are foreign missionaries.

Poverty, Racism, Debt

In masses and homilies, in parks, cathedrals and airports, in capital cities and in the bush, John Paul is certain to return to well-known themes such as his church’s announced concern for the poor and its disgust with racism. Hunger, foreign debt and AIDS, all tragic hallmarks of black Africa today, will also demand papal attention.

So, too, will the complex and controversial process that the Vatican calls “inculturation,” the accommodation of local tradition to Christianity. The church has incorporated music, dance and a vernacular liturgy in its services, but the Pope has warned that the fundamentals of faith and teaching must be universal.

Church strictures against polygamy, the abandonment of infertile wives, tribal rites and superstition are tough sells among African converts. The celibacy of priests in Africa is also an issue about which the Vatican worries much and says little. The story is told of an African cardinal forced to turn to an outsider to fill a bishopric after learning that the three best candidates among diocesan priests were all known to have fathered children.

In Madagascar, his first stop, the Pope will step into a hornet’s nest of local politics. An island as large and as beautiful as it is poor, Madagascar seems to be entering an era of political challenge to the 14-year rule of President Didier Ratsiraka.

Ratsiraka’s reelection last month to a third seven-year term triggered protests of fraud that left five people dead and more than 70 injured. Government opponents have called for a truce during the four-day papal visit.

Madagascar, with a population of 11 million, is prominent among a number of African states now fleeing from failed Marxist economic policies that helped worsen grueling national poverty.

From Madagascar, the Pope will make an overnight call at the rich (for Africa) French island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean. There he will beatify a 19th-Century holy woman, chat with French Premier Michel Rocard and catch a supersonic Concorde to fly to copper-rich Zambia, where per capita income among the 6.7 million people is less than $500 a year and the economy is stagnant.

“Zambia will show the Pope a free church with tremendous vitality,” said Father Eustace Sequeira, a Vatican Radio specialist on English-speaking Africa.

Controversy Over Condoms

John Paul will also witness a squabble between Zambian bishops and President Kenneth D. Kaunda. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome is widespread in Zambia, but the bishops, counseling marital fidelity and sexual abstinence, oppose government plans to distribute 3 million free condoms.

Malawi, the Pope’s last stop, is, like Madagascar and Zambia, about one-quarter Catholic, but its president is an elder of the Church of Scotland. Dr. H. Kamuzu Banda, the “president for life,” is thought to be 91 and has led Malawi since independence from Britain in 1964. He has not brooked an instant of dissent.

Repression remains Banda’s trademark as economic gains he fostered by promoting agricultural development are eroded by population growth. Malawi’s 7.5 million people, increasing at a rate of more than 3% a year, have been swelled by more than 600,000 refuges from war in neighboring Mozambique. The average Malawian earns only about $200 a year.

Pace Tough for Aides

John Paul is a weathered 68 now, and his trips are no longer scheduled as tightly as they were when he began his unprecedented papal pilgrimages a decade ago. Still, even though the pace may be grinding for aides and journalists who scurry behind, they note that the Pope himself seems to draw strength from the very ardor of his labors.

Returning to the Vatican on May 6, John Paul will resume private lessons with tutors in Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Swedish. They will be his languages for at least part of the 37 public addresses he has scheduled for a 10-day visit to Scandinavia beginning June 1.

Times staff writer Michael A. Hiltzik contributed to this article from Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar.