c. 1999 Religion News Service

CASTELGANDOLFO, Italy _ An enthusiastic Pope John Paul II joined forces Thursday (Sept. 23) with music stars Bono, Quincy Jones, David Bowie and Bob Geldof in the Jubilee 2000 campaign to provide debt relief for the world’s poorest countries.

“I appeal to all those involved, especially the most powerful nations, not to let this opportunity of the jubilee year pass without taking a decisive step toward definitely resolving the debt crisis,” the pope said during a private audience with the group, which also included Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs. “It is widely recognized that this can be done.”

Bono, who led the Jubilee 2000 “drop the debt” delegation to the audience, arrived at the pope’s summer residence in the hill town of Castelgandolfo south of Rome in suitably sober dress _ a black suit and white shirt, but no tie.

The Irish rock star of the group U2 called the 79-year-old pontiff “the funkiest thing you can hope for in a Roman pope.”

“The pope gave us much more support than we could have hoped for,” Bono told reporters at a news conference after the audience. He said Jubilee 2000’s goal is total debt relief by the end of next year.

Vatican Radio praised the cause, which the pope and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace have strongly supported for a number of years, but commented that the pope and the U2 lead singer made an odd couple.

“Certainly, an unusual face to face _ that between John Paul II and the turbulent rock star now converted to the cause of international solidarity,” the radio said. “And yet, the encounter and the initiative that he (Bono) is behind have much to offer to the cause of development of the poor countries.” Jubilee 2000, an international crusade drawing much of its momentum from Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant churches, contends that commitments the G7 leaders of the world’s most industrialized countries made at their meeting in Cologne, Germany, in mid-June do not go far enough to aid poor nations.

At the heart of the problem, according to Jubilee activists, is the interest, or debt servicing, required of poor countries that have obtained loans from either countries such as the United States or international lending agencies.

For example, 16 years ago Honduras obtained a $90 million loan from the Inter-American Development bank for a hydroelectric dam. In the past 10 years, the country has paid $196 million just to service the debt and still owes the original $90 million.

In addition, donor countries require poor nations to sharply shift their spending priorities in order to maintain their debt-service payments, taking money away from health, education and other social service programs to pay the debt.

Earlier this week, the Clinton administration asked Congress to triple the amount _ to a total of $370 million _ the United States will offer in debt relief to the world’s poorest nations. Today, (Friday) the Anglican Consultative Council is expected to approve a resolution re-commiting the world’s 70 million Anglicans to the crusade.

On Tuesday, Jubilee 2000 supporters in the United States and other nations opened a “rolling fast” in which some 15,000 people across the country will take turns fasting for up to a week in solidarity with people made hungry by the debt.

The papal audience was timed to build momentum for the campaign just days before the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington.

John Paul said in a statement he read at the audience that the Roman Catholic Church looks “with great concern” at the widespread “poverty and inequalities” in the world. He called debt relief an “urgent” first step in attacking the problem.

“It is, in many ways, a precondition for the poorest countries to make progress in their fight against poverty,” he said. “This is something which is now widely recognized, and credit is due to all those who have contributed to this change in direction.

“We have to ask, however, why progress in resolving the debt problems is still so slow. Why so many hesitations? Why the difficulty in providing the funds needed even for the already agreed initiatives? It is the poor who pay the cost of indecision and delay,” he said.

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But John Paul said debt relief is “only one aspect of the vaster task of fighting poverty and of ensuring that the citizens of the poorest countries can have a fuller share at the banquet of life.”

“Debt-relief programs must be accompanied by the introduction of sound economic policies and good governance,” he said. “Just as important, if not more so, the benefits which spring from debt relief must reach the poorest through a sustained and comprehensive framework of investment in the capacity of human persons, especially through education and health care.

“The human person is the most precious resource of any nation or any

economy.”

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Bono said he was impressed by the pope’s “extreme lucidity.”

“He gives the impression of someone who when he was young would have made you afraid of a punch, and now all that energy has gone into the spirit,” the singer said.

The meeting was not their first, Bono said. When John Paul visited Ireland in 1979, less than a year after he became pope, Bono gave him a book of poems by Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet who later won the Nobel Prize for literature.

“But (the pope) took my sunglasses as well,” Bono said with a smile.

“I had the glasses in my hand. He asked me for them, tried them on and kept them.”

SE END POLK