Trinidad Letter: "Right on, Rome! Right on, John Paul." The mottos chalked on the blackboard of the University of Woodford Square are striking whether they result from spontaneous local enthusiasm for the papacy or the clever piece of opportunism by some pious sodality, writes Hugh O'Shaughnessy.
Under the wide branches of a huge tropical tree the university's habitues discuss the world. They are partaking in a fierce struggle in this multi-racial former British colony in the Caribbean between God (or more exactly gods) and Mammon.
The University of Woodford Square is not a seat of learning in the orthodox sense of that word. Rather is it a traditional place for people to meet and chew the fat - or in local parlance to "lime" - in a shady open space in the centre of the busy capital of this prosperous little Commonwealth republic.
The university, an important centre for opinion formers, came to prominence decades ago, the creation of Dr Eric Williams, the Oxford-educated intellectual who was the architect of Trinidad and Tobago independence from Britain in 1962.
He used it to pass his message on to the voters, particularly those who were black like himself. There he welded them into his powerful People's National Movement, convincing them of his nationalist ideals.
Williams's intellectualism was symbolised by the Latin motto, unique in the West Indies, which he gave his party - Magnus est PMN et prevalebit, Great is the PNM and it will prevail.
In those days, despite the Latin, the PNM faced the wrath of the Catholic Church - regarded as the church of the planters and upper classes and not of the working man.
The conservative Irish-born archbishop Count Finbar Ryan thundered out gracefully written edicts against politicians from his grand episcopal palace facing the Savannah and its racecourse, the local equivalent of the Phoenix Park. Today the PNM, once again in power, has mended its fences with the Vatican, if we are to believe the chalked up mottoes.
The Trinidadian passion for organised - and disorganised - religion continues as strong as ever, for Catholicism, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism the Salvation Army, Pentecostalism, Assemblies of God, Seventh Day Adventists and a myriad of others.
The 1.3 million inhabitants are roughly divided into the black descendants of the original African plantation workers and the brown descendants of the indentured labourers who were shipped in from British India 150 years ago to toil in the burning sun of the sugar cane fields.
Those of Indian extraction are mostly Hindus who tend to be country dwellers, their houses distinguished by the small prayer flags flapping from tall bamboo poles. A minority follow the Muslim faith and Trinidad has had its flirtations with Black Power and Muslim fundamentalism.
In recent days the Hindus have been celebrating Divali, their festival of lights. At this festival time advertisers have naturally been anxious to get their message over to a community which is seen as Trinidad and Tobago's most hard-working and prosperous.
A banner at the sparkling new airport welcomes visitors and wishes them a good Divali: the fast-growing Hindu Credit Union makes its pitch for deposits on radio and television. The Christians, too, slug it out over the airwaves. At 6 p.m. on Sunday Father Charles Henry was explaining the Catholic view of the hierarchy of faith and the nature of revelation on television to viewers. The majority of Trinidadian Christians are Catholics. He was followed half an hour later by a neatly dressed pastor with a pencil moustache from a small US church who called all to his inspirational Bible-study weekend.
But all religions are about to be tested to the full by those who follow the Golden Calf and worship at the altars of capital. For decades Trinidadians and Tobagonians have benefited from modest wealth from the oil deposits on and around their shores. Now foreign oil companies, with BP in the lead, are rushing to develop the republic's immense reserves of natural gas which are gaining in global importance as the world's oil reserves falter. "This will produce a wall of money," said David Renwick, the leading local energy expert. Trinidad and Tobago, handily placed to satisfy the monumental US thirst for energy, is on the brink of becoming a state comparable in wealth to those of the Middle East.
"Trinidad and Tobago already has more money than it knows what to do with," commented Dr Kirk Meighoo, a distinguished young academic and author. He said the country is already loaded down with enough money not to depend on foreign investors to put in more.
He criticised the present PNM government of Prime Minister Patrick Manning for not getting the local banks to put the vast sums they have piled up in deposits from their customers to more productive use.
"Too much is going on consumer spending," he added. Nevertheless grandiose plans exist, for example, for a bridge across the Caribbean to link Trinidad to its twin island Tobago, 30 km away across the Caribbean to the north-east.
But critics of politicians worry that the new wave of cash will mean even more corruption and many prominent figures in public life are already facing grave accusations of profiteering from office.
Evidence of corruption has been common currency in the newspapers during the PNM government today as it was when the country was run by rival parties.
The faithful of all religious stripes will need to pray hard if Mammon is not to consolidate a hold on this rich but vulnerable West Indian republic.