POPE John Paul, who leaves for Central America today, said yesterday he hoped his stop in Nicaragua would be happier than when he visited in 1983 because the people there were now more free.
The 75 year old Pope's visit, which lasts for a week, will also take him to Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela in South America. He has said his aim is to encourage fledgling democracies and pay tribute to the many past victims of human rights abuses.
During his 1983 visit, Nicaragua was ruled by the Sandinistas, whose leader, President Daniel Ortega, lectured the Pope on the revolution, while Sandinista supporters at a papal Mass shouted political slogans and demanded that the Pope denounce US backed Contra rebels.
An angry Pontiff bellowed "silence" at the Mass, and had a sharp public encounter with Father Ernesto Cardenal, a Trappist monk and leading liberation theologian who was Minister for Culture and a prominent Sandinista. Father Cardenal refused to comply with Vatican demands that he leave political office.
"This time we hope everything will be much more joyous because Nicaraguans are more free, and I hope they can come to meet me and not be kept at a distance," the Pope said.
The Pope should have fewer problems this time in Nicaragua, where the Sandinista government has been replaced by that of President Violeta Chamorro, a strict Roman Catholic.
However, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo acknowledged last week that the climate for the visit was "not ideal". Nearly 20 Catholic churches have been damaged by bomb attacks in the past nine months, the country's leading presidential candidate survived an assassination attempt last month and police crushed a rebellious student occupation of the foreign ministry.
While the political landscape in Central America has changed, one common denominator still glares poverty. In Guatemala, the first stop on the tour, 80 per cent of the people live in poverty. In calling for governments to give their people the means to lift themselves out of poverty, the Pope is expected to defend the rights of the region's native Indians to own land and hold political office.