In Brief Visit, John Paul Urges ‘Higher Moral Vision’ for U.S.

Pope John Paul II brought his crusade against abortion and euthanasia to the American heartland Tuesday, telling President Clinton that the country faces its own “time of trial” over its treatment of the weak.

Landing here for a 30-hour stopover en route home from Mexico, the pope gave the impeached president a moral lecture different from the ones he’s been hearing in Washington lately. The Roman Catholic leader likened U.S. debates over rights of the unborn and the dying to the bitter legal battle over slavery before the Civil War.

“Only a higher moral vision can motivate the choice for life,” John Paul declared at an arrrival ceremony as Clinton, who supports abortion rights, sat at his side.

Yet the two men, meeting for the fourth time in six years, found plenty of common ground in a 20-minute private meeting that both sides described as relaxed and wide-ranging. Vatican and White House aides said the sex scandal that led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House--and ongoing trial in the Senate--was not discussed.

The warmth between the Polish pope and the president--a Baptist educated by Jesuits at Georgetown University--was evident. In a National Guard hangar at the airport, Clinton hovered over his stooped, 78-year-old guest, took him by the hand and, chatting into his ear, gently ushered him along a receiving line of U.S. and Missouri dignitaries.

“Welcome back to America!” Clinton exclaimed, drawing thunderous applause from 2,500 spectators chosen from St. Louis’ Catholic parishes. He quoted a Polish phrase that means: “May you live a hundred years and more.”

“For 20 years you have lifted our spirits and touched our hearts,” Clinton said. “People still need to hear your message, that all are God’s children . . . that all the injustices of the past cannot excuse a single injustice today.”

It was Clinton’s only public appearance of the day. He flew here just to meet the pope and returned immediately to Washington, where the Senate was squabbling over whether to call witnesses in his impeachment trial.

John Paul’s day began with an airborne takeoff from Mexico City amid thousands of glinting lights--reflections of mirrors held up across the capital by admirers bidding goodbye. It continued here with a handshake from home run king Mark McGwire and a welcome by thousands along his popemobile route, and ended at a rally by 20,000 young Catholics who wept, squealed, jumped up and down and waved handkerchiefs.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It really means a lot to us to see him,” said Amy Tex, 20, who drove 100 miles with her younger sister, Tina, from central Illinois.

“Just seeing so many other youths around gets you so excited,” added Allison Wilke, a friend of theirs from Wisconsin.

The St. Louis visit, the pope’s 85th foreign trip and his seventh to the United States, followed a landmark papal message, delivered in Mexico City, calling for a “new evangelization” to bring peace, economic justice and solidarity among the people of North and South America.

The pontiff said he came to this Mississippi River port city, founded by French Catholic missionaries in 1764, to repeat his appeal directly to the world’s remaining superpower.

“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States remained alone,” he told reporters traveling on his plane from Rome to Mexico on Friday. “I do not know if this is good or not, but that is the way it is.”

With Clinton at his side Tuesday, the pope said the United States faces a “test of national character” as it did in the landmark Dred Scott case, which was tried in St. Louis.

Scott, a slave bought in 1833 by an Army surgeon stationed near St. Louis, sued for his freedom: Living in a free state, he said, made him a free man.

In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in effect, that slaves were property and not citizens--a decision, the pope said, that declared “an entire class of human beings, people of African descent, outside the boundaries of the national community and the Constitution’s protection.”

The United States’ test today, he added, is a choice “between a culture that affirms, cherishes and celebrates the gift of life, and a culture that seeks to declare entire groups of human beings--the unborn, the terminally ill, the handicapped and others considered ‘unuseful’--to be outside the boundaries of legal protection.”

John Paul, who suffers from symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, looked weak as he hunched over his text. His arm shook as he held the lectern, but his voice was firm.

While his initial reference to abortion was indirect, John Paul spelled out what he meant at the youth rally.

“In parts of this nation,” he said, “laws have been passed which allow doctors to end the lives of the very people they are sworn to help.”

As they have before, aides said, the pope and Clinton discussed abortion privately--and again disagreed. However, Clinton shares the pope’s opposition to assisted suicide, which is legal only in Oregon, although the right-to-die movement is gaining momentum.

The pope’s prepared arrival statement contained strong language urging Americans to “resist a culture of death” by “rejecting all forms of violence.” It criticized the administration’s opposition to a global ban on land mines and implicitly condemned recent U.S.-British air assaults on Iraq.

Although the pope did not read that section, aides said the two leaders discussed Iraq--and issues they agreed on, such as the need to push for a resumption of Middle East peace talks and for greater progress on human rights in Cuba.

Clinton said the two men shared a commitment to taking better care of the poor, and the pope acknowledged “countless works of human goodness and solidarity” by Americans.

The pope’s remarks broke no new ground. He has preached opposition to abortion, violence, injustice and other “social sins” to millions of American Catholics on previous visits.

What’s different this time is the backdrop of the United States’ most intense debate ever about the private morals of a public leader--one that the pope and his bishops in the U.S. have studiously avoided.

John Paul will wind up his visit today with a morning Mass inside the Trans World Dome, which organizers expect 100,000 worshipers to attend, and an evening prayer service at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.