Jackson urges Pope to make SA tour

POPE John Paul was urged to make a symbolic visit to South Africa as an inspiration to all those fighting apartheid, by the Rev Jesse Jackson during a Vatican audience last week.
Mr Jackson, who stood in the race for the American presidency last year, said after their 20-minute meeting that because of the Pope's stated opposition to apartheid, a South African visit "would have a most profound impact in mobilising the moral forces of the world".
During their meeting, Mr Jackson said that he stressed the "tremendous parallels" between the situation in South Africa and that in the Pope's native Poland.
He noted that both the Solidarity trade union movement and black unions in South Africa had been "broken" by the respective governments. Dissident leaders in both countries had been imprisoned and the churches were "under pressure".
During his trip to Europe, Mr Jackson has been accompanied by Bishop Emerson Moore, auxiliary in New York. Bishop Moore who was recently arrested outside the South African consulate in New York, said that he had agreed to join the Baptist minister on his tour because as a black Catholic bishop I support the concerns raised by Mr Jackson".
The two churchmen also visited London during their trip meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Mr Jackson hopes to go to South Africa to attend the installation of Bishop Desmond Tutu as Bishop of Johannesburg in early February.
Bishop Tutu has been playing host to another former US presidential candidate, Senator Edward Kennedy, who was in South Africa last week on a "fact-finding tour".
After visiting the black township of Soweto, and attending Mass at St Pius' Church, Senator Kennedy condemned the migrant labour system in South Africa as "alien to every kind of tradition in the Judeo-Christian ethic". He described his visit to a hostel for migrant labourers as "one of the most depressing, despairing visits made to any facility in my time".
The Massachusetts Democrat also met residents in the township of Mathopestao who are threatened with relocation to the "homeland" of Bophuthatswana, and Mrs Winnie Mandela.