Pope tends his African flock

Touch down in Kenya for Eucharistic Congress by Jack O'Sullivan AFTER A hectic week, crisscrossingAfrica, Pope John Paul II is expected to arrive in Kenya this evening for the highlight of his seven nation tour — his visit to the International Eucharist Congress in Nairobi.
The Congress has been taking place all week parallel to the Pope's stays in Togo, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Zaire.
Now on the eighth day of his visit, the Pope has tackled major issues facing the Catholic Church in Africa — accommodation with African culture, human rights, family life, relations with Islam, poverty and unemployment and apartheid in South Africa.
Notably compromising towards calls for further Africanisation of the Church, the Pope has been hardhitting in reasserting the Church's position on abortion and artificial birth control. He has also pressed for religious toleration of Christianity in countries with Moslem populations. He has repeatedly commented on the crisis in South Africa, blaming the Government for the eruption of violence.
The Pope struck a diplomatic note at the very opening of the tour when he touched down in Lome. Togo, to be greeted by thousands of Togolese, many of whom had travelled for days from remote communities, "I am meeting a Catholic community that is a very
African Church, strong in numbers and vitality", he said. He called for a church which would "mature and bear fruit that is authentically African and authentically Christian."
The Pope praised Togo's tradition of religious freedom saying: "The Church is not an organisation of purely human inspiration. It is divorced from all temporal competition, 70 per cent of Togo's population follow traditional religions and there is sizeable Moslem .element."
From Togo, Pope John Paul journeyed to the high-rise capital of the Ivory Coast, Abidjan, where he consecrated the biggest cathedral in Africa during a five-hour stopover.
It was for Cameroon that the Pope reserved his most controversial comments. At the beginning of his four-day visit On Saturday, he departed from his prepared text during a Mass attended by 100,000 people in Cameroon's capital, Yaounde. Apartheid was "inadmissible," he declared.
On Monday, at a Mass in Bameda, Western Cameroon, he tackled family issues, reasserting the Church's ban on artificial birth control and its commandment for strict marital fidelity. The point was not lost in a nation where Catholics are in the minority and polygamy iE widespread and endorsed by the State.
The family was again his theme on Tuesday as he addressed crowds at Mass in the morning at Douala in Cameroon. He warned of family disintegration in the third world
as children became better educated than their parents.
He warned young people at the mass, often facing poverty and unemployment, against "those who promise you a future without pain, enjoyment without responsibility, success with work, profit without work."
Zaire was the next highpoint in the schedule, following a brief stop-over in the Central African Republic. The Pope was scheduled yesterday to conduct the beatification of Sr Anuarhe Nengapetc, murdered by rebel soldiers in 1964, as the first African woman martyr of the Catholic Church.
The convicted killer of the nun, ex-Colonel Pierre Openge Olombe, had submitted a formal request for an audience with Pope John Paul to plead for forgiveness.
The weekend will be more relaxed. Tomorrow morning the Pope will visit Kenya's Masai Mara game reserve, where he will bless a baby rhinocerous. He had wanted an audience with an elephant, but because they are not very tame, a rhinocerous had to be flown on a 100 minute charter flight to the reserve Iasi weekend. All week men dressed in white have been feeding the rhinocerous to ensure that it does not bolt tomorrow.
Sunday will see the Pope closing the week-long International Eucharistic Congress. The Congress has concentrated throughout (he week on the theme of the family.
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