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PMO clears Pope's visit to India

George Iype in New Delhi

The Prime Minister's Office has cleared a Vatican proposal for Pope John Paul II's visit to India later this year to release an apostolic exhortation for the Asian continent, but the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has sought to put in stiff conditions on the papal trip.

Official sources said Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has approved the visit to India by the head of the Catholic Church, most probably in November.

The Vatican had put in a formal request with the Bharatiya Janata Party government for a papal trip to enable him to present an apostolic exhortation and bring to a close the 1988 Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for Asia.

The Special Assembly is part of a series of meetings the Pope has convened on different continents to prepare the church for the next millennium. The papal visit will coincide with the celebrations of Jesus Christ's birth anniversary on the Asian continent.

The Pope expressed his desire to come over to India after the Chinese government recently rejected a Vatican request for a papal visit to Hong Kong. The Chinese government turned down the proposal because of the Vatican's diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Officials said the Ministry of External Affairs in coordination with the Vatican embassy in Delhi will soon work out the dates and venue for the Pope's trip. Church officials said he will probably visit Bombay or New Delhi.

But the government's decision to approve the Pontiff's visit is under fire from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leadership, which has said that the Pope's mission is to launch an evangelical programme from India.

The VHP office in New Delhi said its president Vishnu Hari Dalmia has written to the prime minister that the papal visit should not be permitted without imposing certain conditions on the Pontiff.

First and foremost among the conditions is that the Pope should give an undertaking to the government that during his visit he will condemn conversion activities of Christian missionaries across the country.

Dalmia has said since the attacks against Christian missionaries earlier this year were a result of the church's continued conversion programmes in the country, the Pope's visit should not be approved without pre-conditions.

While it is unlikely that the government will entertain such a demand from the VHP, the clearance for the papal visit will force the Sangh Parivar to come out strongly against Pope John Paul II's second visit to India. His first visit was in 1986.

While Indian church leaders feel the Pontiff's trip will help the church to articulate better its mission in India in the wake of the anti-Christian violence, VHP leaders fear that an apostolic exhortation from the Pope will only aid in more conversions.

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