Pope

Sad tale of Guam’s Rota- Pope

Nobody could accuse Guama nians of not trying. They’ve turned this once sleepy island into a bustling metropolis, at least by Pacific standards.

Signs of growing prosperi ty are everywhere: four- and six- lane highways cut across this 5,413-square-kilometres island; new commercial buildings are appearing; tourism is expanding quickly along Turnon Bay, where most of Guam’s major resort hotels are located; and every where, it seems, busloads of Japanese tourists are spend ing their yen with glee. But sometimes even the best laid plans turn, well, if not into a bust, then embarrassments.

Consider the fate of the statue of Pope John Paul 11, the spiritual leader of almost all of Guam’s indigenous Chamorro people.

The Holy Father came to this outpost of Christianity in early 1981 as part of an Asian and Pacific pastoral trip.

Crowds jammed the streets to

catch a glimpse of the Pope or to hear one of his homilies.

It may well have been the highpoint of the history of the Roman Catholic Church on Guam.

In honor of the Pope’s pil grimage, a particularly de voted Roman Catholic took a second mortgage out on his house to finance the construc tion of a near life-sized statue of John Paul. The statue, along with a motor to com pletely rotate it, was placed near the spot where the Holy Father spoke to the faithful.

Such is the occasional fate of such projects on Guam that, in an unfortunate turn of events, the man who paid for the statue was unable to make the repayments on the loan.

He had to declare bankruptcy and lost his house.

And the statue? It still stands, a monument to a great event. But it does not move. The “Rota-Pope”, as Guam’s cynics have dubbed it, stands frozen. The statue’s back is toward the Legisla ture and it faces the gover nor’s office. No one seems sure if there is any symbolism

in that.

— Floyd K.

Takeuchi.