World Must Help Africans Build a Future, Pope Says

Pope John Paul II called Monday for a new world drive to develop Africa and rekindle the optimism he said had vanished in a sea of suffering and poverty since independence.

“What is needed on the part of people and nations, developed and developing, is a commitment to solidarity, directed to the good of all,” he told an outdoor Mass of 25,000 people in this small town in southwestern Tanzania.

On the third day of his seventh visit to the world’s poorest continent, the 70-year-old pontiff returned to one of his favorite themes--that a world preoccupied with other issues should not abandon Africa.

At a confirmation ceremony for a group of young Catholics, the Pope conceded that their future on a continent scarred by disease, grinding poverty and conflict could look discouraging.

“How many young people in Africa are deeply affected by the lack of hope that overshadows their future?” he asked a crowd of 25,000 Tanzanians.

He said the failure of the dreams of independence--which began almost 30 years ago for many African countries--was evident in hunger and malnutrition, refugee problems, crime, corruption and a lack of basic health care and education.

“But it need not be so,” the Pope said. “Many problems of development, no matter how overpowering, can be solved if there is a new attitude, diametrically opposed to a selfish desire for profit and a thirst for power.”

Since he arrived in Africa Saturday, the pope has repeated his controversial opposition to the promotion of condoms to combat AIDS. All the countries the Pope is visiting have an AIDS problem.

He accused “safe sex” campaigns of encouraging “the very patterns of behavior which have greatly contributed to the expansion of the disease.” He called instead for a resurgence of moral values, urging Africans to be faithful to their spouses.

The Pope received a traditional welcome of African dance and music in Songea, including a performance at the airport by a group of tribal warriors with spears and animal-skin shields.

After the Mass, he flew to Mwanza, Tanzania, a city of 200,000 people on the southern shores of Africa’s Lake Victoria, to visit a cathedral and give his blessing to 26 people who are ill.

He is scheduled today to celebrate Mass in Mwanza, fly to Tabora for another service and then travel to Moshi at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest mountain.