Party Marks End of Pope’s Australia Visit

Visibly weary as he neared the end of a grueling two-week journey to the vast South Pacific-Indian Ocean region, Pope John Paul II spent his last full day in Australia on Sunday underscoring the social and religious themes that he had stressed during the pilgrimage.

And as the 66-year-old pontiff reiterated his views on such topics as aborigine land claims and women’s rights in five speeches in two cities, about 40,000 of his followers celebrated with a controversial after-Mass beer and barbecue party in Adelaide to see him off to Perth.

The party, immediately following the Pope’s departure from a Sunday morning Mass at sprawling Victoria Park Race Track in Adelaide, had aroused criticism because it had been billed as Australia’s biggest beer bash, and many complained that it was unseemly to plan such an event right after a solemn religious ceremony.

But Adelaide organizers of the papal visit defended the party as both a joyous event and a good way to keep the 183,000 people who attended the Mass from rushing out of the park all at once when the ceremonies ended. They said they had hoped that about 90,000 would stay for beer and barbecue.

Father Anthony Kain, religious director of the Adelaide papal planning group, said, “This sort of party is in the Christian tradition” and likened it to the “love feast” that ancient Christians celebrated after the Eucharist.

‘A Giant Picnic’

“From the start of our planning we wanted to have a giant picnic after the papal Mass,” Kain said.

Defending the serving of beer and wine provided by the South Australia Brewing Co.--a major commercial sponsor of the papal visit--Father Kain said “most of us believe that alcohol is a gift from God.”

“In the total Christian tradition, there is a minority view that holds that things like dancing and alcohol are evil in themselves,” he said. “We respect this view--but it’s never been part of our Roman Catholic tradition.”

But as the party progressed, high spirits wilted in an unexpected 92-degree heat wave, which felled more than 300 people with heat exhaustion during the Mass. When the religious service ended, only 40,000 stayed behind for the barbecue and, according to South Australian government coordinator George Klein, beer consumption was surprisingly light.

“They went light on beer and heavy on soft drinks,” Klein said. “All in all, it was a very orderly evacuation.”

Kangaroos and Yacht Race

During the day, John Paul saw the first kangaroos of the visit in Adelaide and met briefly with representatives of the America’s Cup yacht racing syndicates in Perth. Earlier expectations that the pontiff might go to Perth’s port of Fremantle to bless the America’s Cup fleet were dashed when Vatican planners allowed only an overnight stay in this western Australian city where the 12-meter yachting prize is being contested.

In the five speeches on the 13th day of his 30,000-mile journey to Bangladesh, Singapore, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Seychelles, the pontiff reemphasized the themes that he had expounded along the way.

Noting that the world has become “ever more sensitive to women’s rights,” he decried tax systems that do not allow a special break to the families of non-working mothers. “Should not the work of the homemaker, too, be properly appreciated and adequately supported?” he asked.

As a follow-up on his call Saturday in Alice Springs for aborigine land rights, the Pope said, “The tensions which sometimes arise when people of differing histories, traditions, cultures and faiths seek to live side by side have to be overcome in a spirit of true openness and brotherhood. . . . Every act of discrimination is an act of injustice and a violation of personal dignity.”

In praise of Australia’s policy of state aid for parochial schools, a theme that he struck on his first day in Australia in a speech to government leaders in Canberra, he said “it seems only just that such sharing should take place.”

Praised Multiracial Society

In remarks before his departure early today for Seychelles, he praised Australia’s multiracial society.

“The vastness of your country with all its majestic features and natural beauty is surpassed only by the hospitality and enthusiastic spirit of its people,” he said, “from the aborigines . . . whom I met in Alice Springs to your most recent immigrants, whom I seem to encounter at nearly every stop along the way.”

After a five-hour stop in Seychelles, a predominantly Roman Catholic island nation in the Indian Ocean, John Paul will return to Rome, arriving early Tuesday morning, Rome time.