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MEXICO CITY - Pope John Paul II arrived in Mexico on Friday, and the Roman Catholic Church assembled an all-star roster of corporate sponsors for his visit. Among the more than two dozen ''official sponsors'': PepsiCo, Federal Express Corp., Sheraton Hotels, Eastman Kodak Co., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Mercedes-Benz.
The sponsorships, designed to help defray the estimated $2 million cost of the four-day visit, have outraged many Mexicans. Critics complain that the church and the Mexican government have adequate resources to pick up the tab rather than permit defiling of the Pope's image through commercialization.
Church officials here said that without the sponsorships they might have had to charge people - many of them poor - to attend the Pope's appearances during his fourth visit to Mexico. He leaves Mexico Tuesday for St. Louis and a meeting with President Bill Clinton.
The bill for such visits is usually paid for by the host country and its branch of the Catholic Church, and sales of papal memorabilia have often helped cover costs. But in Mexico, in the view of religious scholars as well as many priests and church members, the mixing of the spiritual and the commercial has gone overboard.
''They've sold the Pope's image before, but they've never done it in such a corporate way, as if it were a soccer World Cup,'' said Elio Masferrer, president of Mexico City's Latin American Association for Religious Studies. He said the practice illustrates the rise of ''the theology of prosperity'' within the church.
The sponsorship generating the most controversy is that of the Mexican snack food company Sabritas, which is owned by Frito Lay, which in turn is owned by PepsiCo Inc. The company has stuffed bags of Ruffles potato chips with stamp-like pictures of John Paul II and the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint. The pictures have devotional messages on the back. For an extra 2 pesos (20 cents), one can buy a special frame to display the 10-picture collection.
In a play on the word papa, which in Spanish means both potato and Pope, the Reforma newspaper ran a satirical full-page ad for Sabritas ''Fried Hosts,'' calling them ''Las Papas del Papa,'' or the ''Potatoes of the Pope.''
''It's not bad that church officials try to market the Pope, but they have managed the campaign with great clumsiness and bad taste, particularly the Sabritas ads, which have prompted gibes and ridicule and vulgarity, as if the Pope were a soccer player or a prominent showbiz figure,'' said Bernardo Barranco, president of Mexico's Center for Religious Studies. Of the companies involved, he said, ''When it comes to capitalizing on the Pope's visit, they're just going after profits.''
''It's a grotesque campaign,'' he said.
Tod MacKenzie, a spokesman for Frito Lay in Dallas, said Sabritas was approached by the church to help sponsor the trip, and that they collaborated ''on a program to reach millions in all corners of Mexico with images of the Virgin and the Pope.'' Proceeds from the sale of the 2-peso frame will be donated to the construction of a shelter for pilgrims next to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, he said.
Reforma, which for two weeks has been running a front-page countdown to John Paul's arrival, is hardly in a position to poke fun at anyone for commercializing the visit. This week, the newspaper has been running half-page ads encouraging readers to buy special classified and display advertisements to ''Send your message to the Pope,'' enhanced, perhaps, with a picture, your name or a drawing of hands in prayer, the ad suggests.
Huge billboards by PepsiCo and Bimbo, a Mexican bread company, tout the papal visit along Mexico City's highways. The Bimbo ads have a picture of the Pope and the Virgin of Guadalupe, and proclaim that at the birth of a new millennium, ''We Reaffirm the Faith.'' Pepsi placards and billboards cite the words of John Paul on a previous visit: ''Mexico, Always Faithful.'' The signs add: ''Pepsi - Official Sponsor of the Fourth Visit of His Holiness John Paul II to Mexico.''
A spokesman for PepsiCo in New York said the ads ''spread a positive message in a tasteful way.''
''Our folks in Mexico don't perceive there's any controversy,'' he said.
Radio Red, a nationwide radio network, has bought full-page ads promoting its coverage and showing a smiling figure that looks like Jesus with his arm around the Pope's shoulder. The Mexican bank Bancomer SA, another official sponsor, is airing television spots advertising commemorative coins to mark the visit, with the bank's logo in the background. TV Azteca, one of Mexico's main television networks, is promoting its coverage of the trip with a slickly produced dramatization of a miracle by John Paul.
On Tuesday, La Jornada newspaper ran a cartoon of a dismayed Pope asking himself, ''With so many commercial messages, will I have time to give my divine message?''
In a news conference, the Vatican's envoy to Mexico, Justo Mullor, and Mexico City's archbishop, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, who approved the sponsorships, said they had seen no disrespectful ads and defended the concept.
''We live in an age of advertising, and we are men of that age,'' one of them said, according to Mexican press reports.
Bishop Trinidad Gonzalez Rodriguez, from Guadalajara, who helped coordinate the visit, said that many bishops were dubious about involving a potato chip company in promoting it but that lay people on a commission that organized the visit were in favor of the idea.
''They decided it was more important to promote the Pope than risk criticism for such sponsorship,'' he said ''I would have done it differently.
''We made a mistake, and we are paying the consequences. We've gotten a lot of criticism, and there are jokes all over the newspapers.''
International Herald Tribune, January 23, 1999
