c. 1999 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II will travel to Mexico City next week to deliver a message for the millennium to the more than 780 million Roman Catholics of the Americas.

The Roman Catholic pontiff is expected to call on the Catholics of North, South and Central America to join in”a new evangelization”that will help to spread what John Paul has called a”much desired civilization of love.” The unity of north and south, poverty and human rights as well as the delicate relations between Catholics and Protestants are expected to figure as major themes in the pope’s public remarks.

In attempting to unite a continent plagued by extreme poverty in much of the south and excessive consumerism in the north, the pope hopes also to counter the inroads religious sects _ as the Vatican calls Protestants, especially Pentecostals _ are making among Catholics.

The six-day trip is the 85th that John Paul has made outside of Italy in the 20 years of his pontificate. His only other stop will be in St. Louis, where he is scheduled to meet with President Clinton, address young people and celebrate Mass in the Trans World Dome.

John Paul will leave Rome for Mexico City on Friday, Jan. 22, fly on to St. Louis on Tuesday, Jan. 26 and leave St. Louis on Wednesday, Jan. 27.

The 78-year-old pontiff, increasingly frail but nonetheless determined to lead the church into the third millennium of Christianity, was invited to Mexico City by the bishops of the Americas, who met at a Vatican synod in late 1997.

The main purpose of the trip is to issue an”Apostolic Exhortation,”in which he will sum up the bishops’ deliberations and put his own stamp on the 76 recommendations, or”propositions,”they presented to him during their meeting in Rome. Speaking through the bishops, he will address Catholics throughout North, South and Central America.

The Synod of Bishops Special Assembly for America, as the meeting was formally known, was the first of a series of regional gatherings of bishops John Paul has convened to prepare the church for the jubilee holy year 2000. The bishops of Asia and Oceania held synods last year, and the bishops of Europe will meet later this year.

The regional synods will culminate in a general synod next year at which bishops from throughout the world will join in examining the role of the bishop in the new millennium.

For the American bishops, the pope chose the bulky topic,”Encounter with the Living Jesus Christ _ the Way to Conversion, Communion and Solidarity in America,”with the issue of solidarity, or unity among the culturally, linguistically and economically diverse groups in the region, emerging as a crucial element in the bishops’ deliberations.

And it is the issue of hemispheric unity that is likely to be a key element in the pope’s message in Mexico when he responds to the synod.

Reporting on the contents of the recommendations, which were not made public, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez, Archbishop of Guadalajara, Mexico said the bishops expressed”their preoccupations as pastors”over”the social reality of that immense and complex continent.” Sandoval’s comments are seen as pointing to the issues the pope is likely to highlight during his visit.”Beginning with the concept of solidarity and proposing a courageous formation of awareness _ individual and community _ on the basis of Christian social doctrine, diverse situations, which painfully mark the continent, were examined, such as corruption and narcotics trafficking, the running of arms, likewise the phenomenon of globalization in its positive aspects and in its challenges.”Reference was made to human rights and to the preferential and evangelical option for the poor,”Sandoval said.

The preferential option for the poor was given major prominence in John Paul’s first trip abroad _ when he visited Mexico in 1979 _ and has become the church’s key response to Liberation Theology, an effort to read the Bible through the eyes of the poor and which was founded and developed primarily by Catholic theologians in Latin America.

The Vatican has criticized Liberation Theology for its use of Marxist analyses to link the social conditions of the poor with the biblical message of liberation.

At the synod the bishops also backed the pope’s appeal for a substantial reduction or cancellation of the foreign debt of poor Third World countries to mark the jubilee and the issue is likely to figure high in John Paul’s message in Mexico City.

In addition, the synod spent a great deal of time discussing the inroads Protestantism, especially Pentecostalism and evangelicalism, is making among Hispanics both in Latin America and the United States.”Special attention was dedicated to the value of religious freedom that is sometimes threatened by proselytism and by the phenomenon of the diffusion of sects,”Sandoval said.

In the homily he delivered at the synod’s closing Mass, the pope recalled the missionaries who carried Christianity to the Americans 500 years ago.”Now is the time of the new evangelization,”he said,”a providential occasion to lead the people of God in America to cross the threshold of the third millennium with renewed hope.” The pontiff told the prelates they”can contribute to spreading throughout America that much desired civilization of love, which places much value on the primacy of man and the promotion of human dignity in all its dimensions, starting from the spiritual dimension.” A high point of John Paul’s visit to Mexico City will be a Mass formally concluding the synod of bishops in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where he prayed before the shrine of the Madonna in 1979, three months after his election.

Because of the ravages of what is believed to be Parkinson’s disease, the pope’s schedule is far less demanding than those of previous years. The neurological disorder has made it painful for him to walk and has left him with slurred speech and a constantly trembling left hand.

He is scheduled to sign the Apostolic Exhortation _ the formal response to the bishops’ recommendations _ at a ceremony in the residence of the apostolic nuncio, celebrate Sunday mass at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, visit a hospital and meet with the bishops, the president of Mexico and the diplomatic corps.

To mark the turn of the century, he will be presented with representatives of every generation of the 1900s gathered to hear him speak Monday at the Aztec Stadium.

DEA END POLK