Peru’s Leader Implores Pope to Reach Out to ‘Those Who Hate’

LIMA, Peru — Pope John Paul II arrived Saturday evening in poor, terrorism-plagued Peru and heard a plea from President Alan Garcia to reach out to “those who are sick with hate and who kill and destroy with violence.”

John Paul, on a 12-day, four-nation mission to South America, arrived from neighboring Bolivia on an Aeroperu DC-8 jetliner.

At Lima’s airport he expressed his sympathy with “the huge multitude that has experienced grief, violence, abandonment and hunger” in Peru.

Later Saturday evening, scattered blackouts attributed to dynamite charges set by leftist rebels hit Lima while the Pope was addressing priests, nuns and seminary students. Police said no one was hurt and the pontiff’s activities were not affected.

Earlier in the day, a military intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said two men posing as police with automatic rifles were arrested on the papal motorcade route from the Lima airport to downtown. He said there was an order to shoot and kill any armed suspect near the Pope.

Echoing a theme he stressed in Bolivia and Uruguay, the Pope cited Peru’s “hunger for bread” and called on its citizens to build “a more fraternal and just society.”

Garcia, who has halted virtually all payment of Peru’s $14.6-billion foreign debt, demanded a fairer shake for poor nations.

“We reject the usurious terms of the foreign debt,” the president told John Paul at the airport.

It has been three years since the Pope has been to Peru, a country bloodied by an unrelenting leftist insurgency. When he was here in 1985 he pleaded with rebels to abandon their struggle to overthrow Peru’s elected government.

But the violence is worse than ever, and the country is submerged in a serious economic crisis.

Inflation is expected to top 400% this year and the country has virtually no dollars left in reserves to maintain economic growth.

Today he plans to celebrate an open air Mass, meet with church officials and local leaders, and close a conference of Latin bishops.