Leave Marxist Roots, Pope Urges Guinea-Bissau : Africa: John Paul II advises the revolutionary government to avoid corruption and abuse of power as it moves toward a more open society.

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau —  Preaching brotherhood in the dusty capital of one of the world’s poorest nations, Pope John Paul II on Saturday urged a revolutionary government to move firmly away from its Marxist roots.

The Pope told leaders of this West African country of 1 million to shun corruption and the abuse of power as they continue on a path to a more open society after a decade of Marxist failure.

A former Portuguese colony that won independence in 1974 after a sapping guerrilla war, Guinea-Bissau, the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined, is the poorest of the five countries on John Paul’s tour of sub-Saharan Africa. Once firmly Marxist, Guinea-Bissau has moved in the past few years away from Soviet and Cuban sponsors toward a market economy and greater friendship with the United States.

Cheering Roman Catholics, a 7% minority nationwide, gathered along the roadside as the papal motorcade swept past banana trees and tin-roofed shacks to the ramshackle capital of a country where 80% of the people are illiterate and the average yearly income is less than $200.

One-third of all children die before age 5 in a green and swampy land of subsistence agriculture, mostly rice, where life expectancy is just 40 years, according to figures of the World Bank. It lists Guinea-Bissau as one of the world’s 15 poorest countries.

Arriving from a rainy two days in the normally drought-stricken island nation of Cape Verde, the Pope appealed in his homily at a soccer stadium Mass for full respect for human rights in a one-party state.

Such respect, he said, must be a fundamental ingredient in “a common aspiration for authentic solidarity and social and economic cooperation as the fruit of overcoming static and conditioned ideology.”

In an arrival address to President Joao Bernardo Vieira and members of his government, the Pope called for a broadly based national education system shorn of ideological bias.

“I pray that educative programs enjoy full success, beginning with genuine literacy,” the Pope said.

Vatican officials traveling with the pontiff said that his reference was to the strong, lingering Marxist content of the national syllabus and a continuing resentment against public education.

John Paul asserted that individuals must be masters of their own destiny. They must resist “all that would seek to crush the individual or cancel him in an anonymous collectivity by institutions, structures, or a system,” he said.

The Roman Catholic Church, as a colonial symbol, was one of the principal enemies in the revolt by Vieira and others against Portugal in the 1970s. Their struggle was strongly supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba.

The church had little influence in the independent Marxist state that was formed when a beaten Portugal withdrew. After a decade of economic failure, though, Guinea-Bissau today welcomes both Western aid and foreign investment in a belated quest for modernization.

Now the Catholic Church is respectable again and so is the United States, whose modest $4-million aid program, which funds small Peace Corps contingents, is still dwarfed by a massive Soviet presence.

This morning, to mark World Leprosy Day, John Paul will visit a modern leprosarium on the outskirts of the capital. Run by Franciscan priests and funded by the Italian government, the center has become a continental model for an Africa where leprosy is only one of innumerable uncontrolled afflictions.

Later today, the papal cavalcade flies to landlocked, French-speaking Mali, the third stop on an eight-day African odyssey that is John Paul’s 45th foreign trip. After further stops in Burkina Faso and Chad, the Pope returns to the Vatican next Thursday.

Pope’s Trip to Africa Jan. 25-Feb.1 1. Cape Verde I.: Jan. 25-27 2. Guinea-Blssau: Jan. 27-28 3. Mall: Jan. 28-29 4. Burkina Faso: Jan. 29-30 5. Chad: Jan. 30-Feb.1