Pope Launches African Tour in Tanzania : Religion: The pontiff quickly calls for an international effort to combat continent’s AIDS problem. He also makes appeal for refugees.

Pope John Paul II, arriving Saturday in Tanzania at the start of a 10-day, four-country African tour, lost no time in tackling two of the continent’s gravest problems: AIDS and refugees.

Within three hours of a tumultuous welcome from hundreds of thousands of people on the Tarmac of Dar es Salaam airport, the 70-year-old pontiff called for a massive international effort to combat AIDS.

“The AIDS epidemic calls for a supreme effort on the part of governments, the world medical and scientific community, and all those who exercise influence in developing a sense of moral responsibility in society,” he told an audience of diplomats.

AIDS, which destroys the body’s resistance to disease, is a massive problem in sub-Saharan Africa, affecting both men and women.

The Pope, on his seventh visit to Africa, has caused controversy on previous trips by his stand against the use of all contraceptives. Many African governments advise the use of condoms in combatting the spread of AIDS.

“Only a response which takes into account both the medical aspect of the illness, as well as the human, cultural, ethical and religious dimensions of life can offer complete solidarity to its victims and raise the hope that the epidemic can be controlled and turned back,” he said Saturday.

Tanzania had reported 5,627 cases of the disease by the start of this year, the sixth-highest country total in the world, according to the World Health Organization.

The Pope also is scheduled to visit Burundi, Rwanda and the Ivory Coast on his current trip. All three countries, although small, have reported AIDS cases that put them among the 25 most afflicted nations in the world.

John Paul also called for urgent intervention on behalf of Africa’s 5 million refugees and 13 million displaced people.

“Some are victims of natural calamities, but most are victims of ethnic conflict, power struggles, or of failed development policies,” the Pope said.

Civil wars are currently raging in Angola, Ethiopia, Liberia, Morocco, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

The Pope has repeatedly appealed to industrialized nations for aid to poverty-ridden Africa since his first visit to the continent in 1980.

The Pope also has welcomed the surge in membership in the Roman Catholic Church in Africa, where 24 million people have become Catholics in the past decade. There are a reported 80 million Catholics in Africa altogether.

The Roman Catholic Church was established in 1888 in what is now Tanzania. Now 21% of that nation’s population, or 5,340,000 people, are Catholic.

Cheering crowds 10-deep lined John Paul’s seven-mile drive in an open car Saturday through the hot coastal city to St. Joseph’s Cathedral, where the Pope gave a blessing.

From there he went to the State House to address the diplomatic corps and to hold talks with President Ali Hassan Mwinyi and former President Julius K. Nyerere, who is a devout Catholic.

The Pope plans to fly Wednesday to tiny, landlocked Burundi, which borders Tanzania to the west. From there his itinerary takes him north Friday to neighboring Rwanda, a country with one of the highest population densities in the world.

John Paul is then to fly about 2,500 miles west to the Ivory Coast, where he plans to consecrate a basilica built by President Felix Houphouet-Boigny at a cost of $200 million.