Pope Decries Poor Nations’ Debt Burden

Pope John Paul II completed a strenuous day in the rarefied air of this Andes mountain city Wednesday with a sharp comment on the injustices that the international economic order is doing to poor countries and poor people.

Noting “the enormous weight of foreign debt that threatens development” in countries such as Ecuador, the pontiff called upon world leaders and others with power “to put into effect the means to create a more just social order.”

His speech to workers and farmers crowded into Quito’s vast Plaza of San Francisco echoed a similar address in Flatrock, Newfoundland, last September when he sharply criticized both capitalist and Communist economic systems and called for a “restructuring” of the world economic order.

“We cannot ignore the difficult moments in which your homeland finds itself in the economic and social field,” John Paul told the workers.

Strike Left Six Dead

A two-day general strike here three weeks ago led to clashes with police and left six dead, scores injured and more than 500 under arrest. The strike was called to protest price rises brought about by government austerity measures stemming from Ecuador’s $7-billion foreign debt crisis.

While acknowledging that the church is not competent to find the necessary technical solutions to economic crises, he said that it seeks to “enlighten consciences and change hearts.” Only thus, he said, can people “get moving so that this intolerable abyss that separates those very few who possess excessive riches and the great multitudes of the poor, including those who live in misery, gradually disappears.”

In another of eight speeches during the day, the pontiff reminded journalists that the fundamental premise of their work should be “incorruptible objectivity and respect for the dignity of man.”

In a radio address delivered while visiting Quito’s Roman Catholic broadcasting station, John Paul upheld freedom of expression but told the media that “your freedom ends where the rights of others begin. You find this boundary frequently in the due respect of privacy and the good name of persons and institutions.”

Warning against those within and outside the media who “want to profit at the expense of the common good,” the Pope recalled “how many temptations hover over your daily work--pressure groups, economic interests, easy money, moral permissiveness, sensationalism, instigation of hatred and violence.”

As the Pope ended the fifth day of his 12-day Latin American pilgrimage, some members of his party privately expressed discontent with the security arrangements upon his arrival in Quito on Tuesday. Shoulder-to-shoulder crowds outside the city’s metropolitan cathedral pressed so closely when the pontiff arrived there that Vatican security men appeared genuinely alarmed.