Paraguay Irks Vatican by Canceling Papal Meeting

A confrontation between the Vatican and the dictatorial government of Paraguay intensified Thursday, four days before the scheduled arrival there of Pope John Paul II.

Early this week, the government of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner abruptly canceled a meeting planned for next Tuesday between the Pope and leading Paraguayans, including opposition politicians. A Vatican spokesman accompanying the Pope on his South American tour issued a response here Thursday that bristled with irritation.

“For now, I must clearly express the astonishment caused by a decision without precedent in the exercise of the Holy Father’s pastoral mission,” said the written statement by Joaquin Navarro, the Vatican press coordinator.

The confrontation remained unresolved as Paraguayan bishops insisted that the meeting will be held.

Deteriorating Relations

In the last two years, the Roman Catholic Church in Paraguay has grown increasingly critical of the government. Church leaders have accused the government of violating human and civil rights, and the government has accused them of siding with the opposition.

Several opposition leaders were included on the invitation list for Tuesday’s scheduled meeting, called an “encounter with the builders of the society.” Others invited included cultural, educational, labor and civic leaders.

The ministers of education and foreign relations said in a Monday letter to the papal nuncio in Paraguay that the meeting was being suspended “for security reasons.”

The letter said the decision was based on the intention of a minority of those invited to “make this meeting an opportunity for a provocation of the government.” It said the government anticipated disruptions aimed at “compromising the image of our country (and) the dignity of our authorities.”

The government had approved the meeting during negotiations on the schedule for the Pope’s two-day visit, but it rejected plans for a side trip to the provincial city of Concepcion.

The bishop of Concepcion, Anibal Maricevich, is one of the church’s most outspoken critics of the government. In their letter, the education and foreign ministers called him “a bishop of intransigent opposition.”

The letter accused Maricevich of planning to speak out in the Tuesday meeting against the exclusion of Concepcion from the Pope’s itinerary. The permanent committee of the Paraguayan Conference of Bishops met this week and decided to insist on holding the meeting Tuesday. They left open the possibility of moving the gathering from a government-owned sports auditorium to another site.

There was no indication Thursday that the confrontation would bring any reciprocal cancellation by the Vatican. The Pope is scheduled to meet Monday with Stroessner in the presidential palace.

Paraguay is the only dictatorship on the Pope’s four-nation tour. He came to Bolivia on Monday and will go to Peru on Saturday.

He spent seven hours Thursday in Sucre, a sparkling city in the Andean highlands, before flying to the lowland city of Santa Cruz. While La Paz is the seat of government, Sucre is the constitutional capital, and Bolivia’s Supreme Court sits here.