Pope Risks Angola Enclave’s Wrath With Share-Wealth Plea

Pope John Paul II delivered an unpopular message to a dangerous place Monday, telling independence-minded worshipers in this guerrilla-plagued enclave of Angola to share their oil wealth with the rest of a poor country.

Security for a papal airport Mass was extraordinary, with young, black-uniformed Angolan police reinforced by a dozen plainclothes instructors from Spain’s Guardia Civil.

There had been warnings that the Pope might encounter trouble in Cabinda, site of mounting hit-and-run attacks by small pro-independence guerrilla groups. His three-hour visit under glowering skies was sometimes tense, but there were no incidents.

Cabinda, a territory of around 138,000 people north of the Congo River that is separated from the rest of the country by 37 1/2 miles of Zairean territory, is currently the most violent and unsettled part of an Angola seeking peace after a 16-year civil war.

Two of the biggest guerrilla movements did not join the cease-fire last year that ended the fighting between government forces and guerrillas of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). As a result of continuing separatist attacks, however, government and UNITA troops are still active in Cabinda, making it the only part of the country where the formerly warring armies have not kept a promise to withdraw to U.N.-supervised assembly areas.

A Russian surgeon who works in Cabinda said as he watched Monday’s Mass that in recent weeks, he has treated as many as 15 gunshot victims in one night. People at the Mass spoke of a recent guerrilla attack with grenades on a police post and of government soldiers shooting at a crowd during a disputed soccer match last weekend.

John Paul, who dismissed security concerns to make the Cabinda visit, also swam against the current of the crowd in urging them to help build a united Angola. One after another, with nary a naysayer, worshipers at the Mass--clergymen to local government officials to everyday Cabindans--all told reporters traveling with the Pope that they favor independence over autonomy offered them by the central government in Luanda.

“This is one of the many riches of this land of Cabinda from which the people get no benefit,” a local priest told John Paul in making him a gift of a handsome, hardwood carving during the Mass.

International oil companies, including Gulf Cabinda, owned by Chevron Corp. of San Francisco, pump around 500,000 barrels of oil a day from Cabinda fields, most of them offshore. Oil revenue of nearly $3 billion per year accounts for almost 90% of Angola’s foreign exchange earnings.