Post-Papal Blues : John Paul’s Visit Is Blessing to Some, Curse to Others in Sun Belt Cities on His Tour

In Miami, the vice is back.

In Columbia, S.C., civic leaders are rankled over the way the national press portrayed their Bible Belt city.

In Phoenix, merchants and street vendors have been soured by the whole experience.

The aftermath of Pope John Paul II’s barnstorming tour of the Sun Belt is not all peace and love. What may have been a blessing for some has turned out to be a curse for others. Nobody is blaming the peripatetic pontiff for the bruised egos and battered pocketbooks, but many are the citizens who, like a barkeep in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter, are saying: “Thank God, the Pope is gone!”

The dust had hardly died down on the pontiff’s twilight parade down Biscayne Boulevard in Miami, the pontiff’s first stop, before the hookers and hustlers were out in tight dresses and skin-clinging jeans, plying their nocturnal trade at the usual spots along the thoroughfare.

Three days later, a Sunday, a melee erupted at the papal Mass site in Tamiami Park over the 8,000 potted chrysanthemums that had decorated the altar and been blessed by the pontiff.

The trouble began when a local television station reported that the yellow and white flowers would be given away. About 200 people flocked to the site, but some of the souvenir hunters reportedly bolted the line and began scooping up armloads of flowers and fleeing. Police were required to quell the outbreak of fights that ensued.

“The crowd became unruly and we had a couple of incidents of chair-throwing,” Officer Jorge Garrido said.

City officials in Columbia, the South Carolina capital and the second stop on the Pope’s tour, have a different beef.

Columbia was the site of an impressive meeting between the pontiff and 26 Christian leaders at the University of South Carolina, followed by a dramatic interfaith prayer service at the university’s 72,000-seat football stadium.

But local officials complain that the national news coverage focused more on the sparse crowds, the broiling temperatures and the antics of a few fundamentalist street preachers than the ecumenical aspects of the Pope’s visit.

“We tried very hard to project the image of the city in a positive way,” lamented Mayor T. Patton Adams. “The people who were handing out anti-Pope literature represented a minuscule group.”

Added Crawford Cook of Cook Ruef & Associates Inc., an advertising firm that was paid $25,000 by the city to promote its image for the papal visit: “The national press corps is about as cynical a group as I’ve dealt with in my life.”

Across the region, there still is debate over the estimated $30-million price tag for John Paul’s American tour--even among some of the faithful.

“As a young Catholic, I am appalled at the amount of money . . . spent for the Pope’s U.S. visit,” Sandi Simpton of Huntsville, Tex., wrote in a letter to the editor of the Houston Chronicle after John Paul’s visit to San Antonio.

“How can Pope John Paul II, supposedly a servant of man as well as God, justify the multimillions spent to welcome and impress him . . . when so many people desperately need food, decent housing and even organ transplants?”

The biggest controversy so far, however, has been over the inflated projections of the crowds that would greet the pontiff.

City officials from Miami to Los Angeles predicted sidewalks jammed with spectators during John Paul’s “Popemobile” motorcades. In every case, the crowds were far smaller than expected--in some cases by 50%.

Here in New Orleans, one police officer compared the size of the crowd along the parade route to “an early morning Mardi Gras parade--in bad weather.” In Phoenix, where residents woke up on the day of the Pope’s visit to morning newspaper headlines saying “Heat Fells 600 at Papal Mass in San Antonio,” the turnout for the motorcade was even more disappointing.

Hardest hit by the overly optimistic projections were the myriad street vendors who had looked forward to making a killing.

For example, Melanie and Bob Namuth, who own a street-vending operation known as Dog Gone Good, filled two of their three pushcarts with hot dogs and Polish sausages and camped out overnight to ensure that they would have a prime spot along the Phoenix motorcade route.

But, as Melanie Namuth sadly related the day after the Pope’s visit: “There were more Secret Service men and vendors than spectators. The Pope’s a great guy, but I’m glad this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience because we couldn’t afford it again.”

On the other hand, leaders of a movement to recall Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham had no complaints at all. Despite the less-than-anticipated crowds, they managed to pick up 4,000 signatures for their petitions along the parade route.

“It’s not like the Pope descended on Phoenix to help us out,” said Ed Buck, head of the Mecham Recall Committee. “But this puts us a lot closer to the magic number we need to put this on the ballot.”

Researchers Edith Stanley in Atlanta, Rhona Schwartz in Houston and Lorna Nones in Miami contributed to this report.