Pope in Fine Form as He Heads to Colorado : Religion: John Paul visits Jamaica en route to Denver, where he will lead World Youth Day celebrations.

Spain saluted an old friend over the Mediterranean on Monday. Near Palma de Mallorca, a pair of F-15 fighters escorted an Italian jetliner through Spanish airspace. The summer sun, glinting brightly off the fighters’ fuselages, mirrored the mood of the man they had come to honor.

“I’m still walking on my own two feet, even in the mountains,” the Pope responded jovially to a reporter who inquired about his health. “I do everything possible to stay in shape and not to create problems.”

Belying the aches of age and the travails of his lonely job, Pope John Paul II sallied forth to new foreign adventure Monday in radiant good humor--and undiminished enthusiasm for unyielding moral strictures that millions of Catholics around the world openly challenge.

On a pastoral mission that includes his first visit to the United States in six years, John Paul will reassert oft-told tales on well-known themes that preoccupy and divide his church. From birth control to priestly celibacy, stern papal views are not one whit different on this 60th trip than they were on John Paul’s first journey abroad nearly 15 years ago.

The highlight of the Pope’s third U.S. visit will come in Denver beginning Thursday, where he will lead World Youth Day celebrations. There he will also meet President Clinton for the first time: The meeting of “an old Pope and a young President,” in the view of the Pole who became Pope in 1978 when he was 58.

Would John Paul talk with Clinton about abortion?

“We’ll see. You know that I am against abortion,” the Pope replied.

“The theme of the Denver visit is life,” he said in response to another question.

What matches John Paul’s constancy is his enjoyment of preaching trips that allow him to escape the confinement of Vatican routine. Airborne Monday, the tanned 73-year-old pontiff looked relaxed and alert. With a recent doctors’ all-clear on the record, he looked fit 13 months after bowel surgery, although he was obviously nonplussed by a quivering left hand that has become more noticeable in recent years.

Responding to questions, he blamed the news media for contributing to a climate of violence among young people in the United States.

“The violence is tragic for a country like the United States, the most advanced country in the world. What is reason for this demoralization, this violence? It is a civilization, no?” John Paul asked rhetorically. “And for this civilization someone is responsible. Who is responsible for this degradation of the young people? . . . The orientation, the climate of the communications media are against the civilization, against progress. We cannot be astonished of having such a result.”

He told a Mexican reporter that the growth of a drugs crisis in Mexico was “another aspect of this moral degradation. . . . But I say to Mexicans that it is always possible to overcome evil with good. I think the fundamental question of this meeting with youth in Denver is this--that they should not give in to evil.”

To Jamaica, this “beautiful island in the sun,” John Paul on Monday brought a belated message of brotherhood to the descendants of slaves who, in chains, were among the New World’s earliest settlers.

“The immensity of their suffering corresponds to the enormity of the crime committed against them,” the Pope said at airport welcoming ceremonies here. “Let us pray that the wounds of past experiences will at last be healed and that everyone will work, with full respect for each person’s dignity, for a future in which justice, peace and solidarity will leave no room for hatred or discrimination.”

Convalescence from his surgery forced the Pope to skip Jamaica last fall during a Caribbean trip to mark the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ journey.