John Paul Cautions Rich, Secular Nordic Societies : Celebrate Man, Not Machine, Pope Asks

TROMSO, Norway — A stern moralist in the Land of the Midnight Sun, Pope John Paul II cautioned the rich, secular societies Friday that mankind is more important than machines and spirit more valuable than substance.

John Paul’s arrival here at the Arctic tip of Europe--latitude 69 degrees, 40 minutes north--in nighttime daylight earned a modest footnote in the list of firsts by history’s most traveled pontiff: Never before had a Pope traveled north of the Arctic Circle.

“I like it here,” the Pope told Norwegian interviewers on the second day of a 10-day swing through the five Nordic countries.

John Paul came to Tromso to call on 621 Catholics, 30 nuns, eight priests and one bishop who represent his church in the chill northern fastness.

“As Christians we proclaim a wisdom that recognizes and upholds the priority of ethics over technology, the primacy of the person over things, the superiority of spirit over matter,” the Pope said in an address issued en route to Tromso.

In this “top-of-the-world” fishing and tourist port that is the traditional jumping-off point for expeditions to the North Pole 1,375 miles away, John Paul led a vesper service at light-as-noon 10 p.m.

The sun, which never sets here at this time of the year, tried mightily to break through stratus clouds as the overcoated Pope addressed a festive leather-jacket-and-gloves crowd of several thousand in the town’s main square.

“(We are) gathered this evening in the long bright twilight of the north, in the light of the unsetting sun which so clearly symbolizes Christ, the light of the world, who is the same yesterday, today and forever,” said a Pope obviously enjoying himself.

In the prayer service structured as a papal analysis of the Lord’s Prayer, John Paul hailed scientific and technological advances that “have dispelled many of our fears,” but he warned against “the temptation to decide for ourselves what is good and evil without reference to the God who made us.”

Norway, flush with oil, has one of the highest standards of living in Europe. All but a handful of the 4.2 million Norwegians are nominal Lutherans, but few practice their faith in a liberal, socialist society.

En route north from Oslo, the Pope spent most of the day in Trondheim, the third-largest city in Norway and the birthplace of Norwegian Christianity a millennium ago. In a white-robed Mass for central Norway’s 1,704 Catholics, he distributed first communion to schoolchildren at a state technical university.

Norway’s Patron Saint

Formerly Norway’s capital, Trondheim, which sits at the mouth of an inviting fjord, was home of 11th-Century King Olav II, who is patron saint of both Norway’s Catholics and Lutherans. The old king’s bones once rested inside a then-Catholic and now-Lutheran cathedral where the Pope prayed in an ecumenical service Friday.

Symbol of historic Lutheran-Catholic hatreds in Norway, Olav’s bones were stolen during the Reformation and haven’t been seen since. Where Olav lies today is a Great Norwegian Mystery, although folks in Trondheim, not an excitable lot, don’t seem to talk much about it any more.

At Trondheim’s copper-spired, Gothic Nindaros Cathedral, last rebuilt earlier this century, John Paul told his Lutheran interlocutors that “before us lies the duty of opening a new Christian chapter in history.” Only four of Norway’s 11 Lutheran bishops attended the service, packed with more than 2,000 people.

Speaking to Norwegians in a nationally televised address, the Pope cautioned that “science and technology, like the economic life that they generate, cannot of themselves articulate the meaning of existence or of human striving. They cannot of themselves explain, much less eliminate, evil, suffering and death.”

Traditions of community, home and family are being undermined today, the Pope warned, “by transformations which do not always acknowledge the ethical dimension inherent in all human activity and endeavor.”

“We wish to be free, but unless there is common understanding of what we ought to do, and not simply what we can do, freedom ends in the tyranny of selfishness and superior force,” the Pope said.

John Paul flies this morning from Norway to Iceland on the third day of his Nordic pilgrimage--the 42nd voyage of his reign--that will also take him to Finland, Denmark and Sweden.