Watching the Pope's tour lately took me instantly back to his first foreign visit ever. It was exactly 20 years ago and it was also to Mexico. Having covered his election in Rome about three months before, in October, 1978, it was my first major chance to hear and watch the man up close. He seemed to be an open, sensitive person, a truly modern leader who sincerely cared about human rights and about "all sorts and conditions of men," i.e., all humanity.

Above all, he seemed very human himself. Unlike Paul VI, his major predecessor,
this Pope could smile. He had great charisma and hence enormous popularity. But even then there were hints of a different reality beneath.

The Star sent me to cover his visit to Ireland in the fall of 1979 and then, by a sort of lottery system, my photographer and I were chosen as part of the press corps who flew across the Atlantic on the papa; 747 to Boston where the pontiff's first American tour began.

I won't forget the thrill of watching nearly 1 million Irish Catholics in Phoenix Park, Dublin, wildly responding to the Pope's loud cry: "Ireland, semper fidelis!"

He repeated it three times to roars of cheering and applause.  Ireland, forever faithful.

Unfortunately for the Vatican, Ireland's fidelity to its ultra-traditional Catholic heritage was just beginning to erode. Since then, it has been a tragic story of growing disillusionment, creeping secularism and indifference - even rebellion - against the church at home and in Rome.

Shocking sexual scandals and various attempted cover-ups by the hierarchy, involving not just parish clergy but one or two bishops as well, have greatly offended the majority of the formerly faithful. the same is true of the Vatican's relentless position on artificial means of birth control, the advancement of women to the priesthood, and the whole mess over divorce, annulments and second marriages. The trip was not the cause of what's happening today in the Irish Republic. But historians will use it as a 20-year-old marker of the beginning of serious troubles in the Irish church.

On the tour, and even more glaringly on the back-to-back sweep of several key cities in the U.S. northeast - New York, Philadelphia, etc. - something became increasingly clear to me… There was already a huge gap emerging between the popularity of the Pope as a top celebrity, and the actual test of all the hundreds of speeches he felt he felt burdened to share.

Here's one of hundreds of examples: She was a well-dressed businesswoman of about 30, well-spoken and bright. She was one of many thousands who had flocked to the Washing-
ton Mall in October, 1979, to see and hear Jon Paul. Who joined in the cheering and needed to wipe tears away at times.

As the event closed, I identified myself and asked for an interview.  I said that I had noticed how moved she had seemed by the papal message. I went on to ask about her feelings about the Pope in general. It wqas an enthusiastic reply, mostly based on his manner, gestures and charisma in general.

I asked her about the actual content of his lengthy speech/homily. She looked surprised and uncomfortable. Her reply was that she hadn't really paid much attention. Her feelings had taken control. When I read her some of his allusions to contraception, women priests and other controversial matters, she said: "I certainly don't believe in any of that. I have birth control pills in my purse here."

What I have missed in the reportage coming out of the latest Mexican visit is some analysis based upon this sort of reality. We know the Mexicans loved him, ere ecstatic about having him for a third time in their midst, and turned out in large numbers to celebrate. What we don't have (unless I have missed it somehow) is the other side. Almost robot-like, he repeated his usual agenda of thorny and backward -looking dogmas. What did Mexicans in general think of these? Or, Mexico's Catholic theologians? How about front-line priest; what do they really think?

For instance, whether the Pope speaks with integrity about justice in Chiapas or in general in a crucial question. In, Mexico he again saw much more of the rich and the powerful face-to-face than of any poor peasants. Did he once stop to ask what his policy of depriving both Catholics and, as far as possible, everybody else in poor countries like Mexico, of effective ways to prevent overpopulation? Any demographer can document how the Vatican has tried fiercely to scupper every major attempt by the U.N.  or other agencies to initiate global moves toward population control.

Half the wars raging, more than half of the poverty and plagues in poor countries , and a huge amount of our abasement of Earth's biosphere stem from  the blunt truth that Earth cannot sustain more people.

The glitz of 85 papal tours is patent, though worn. Apart from PR, however, they've mostly been a disaster.

Tom Harpur     Toronto Star Jan 31/99