New Challenges

During his trip the Pope reaffirmed the Church’s special vocation for the poor; honoured the memory of Archbishop Oscar Romero; and encouraged the bishops to resume their missionary activities to counter the steady loss of Catholics in urban areas to other Christian denominations and sects. His whole approach to the Church in Latin America was in direct continuity with that of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

Benedict’s most significant acts were the canonisation of Brazil’s first native saint, the Franciscan Anthony de Saint Anne Galvão, known as “a man of peace and reconciliation”, and his visit to the Facenda Esperança, a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts. During this visit the world saw a moved pontiff engaging in intense conversations with the young residents of the Centre, many of whom come from a background of terrible violence and abandonment.

Of all the comments made on the Pope’s trip, perhaps the most significant was that of a young student: “It was a crash course on the beauty of Christianity in a country where everyone thinks they know what it means to be Catholic”. The remark highlights the fact that only a few decades ago belonging to the Catholic Church was taken for granted in Latin America and, as a consequence, the Church laid more emphasis on tackling the social evils wracking the continent.

In response, Pope Benedict turned the equation around, and delivered an impassioned appeal to a renewal within the Church on the basis of those fundamental principles of the Christian message from which her social and political commitments arise.

At the inaugural session of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean delivered at the Shrine of Aparecida on May 13, the Pope stressed with dramatic emphasis that “at present, this same [Catholic] faith has some serious challenges to address, because the harmonious development of society and the Catholic identity of these [Latin American] peoples are in jeopardy.”

The Pope then gave indications on how to address this challenge, “To you, who represent the Church in Latin America, today I symbolically entrust my Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, in which I sought to point out to everyone the essence of the Christian message. The Church considers herself the disciple and missionary of this Love: missionary only insofar as she is a disciple, capable of being attracted constantly and with renewed wonder by the God who has loved us and who loves us first (cf. 1 Jn 4:10). The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by attraction”.

In this last statement the Holy Father issued a clear warning to all the faithful not to fall into the temptation of imitating the numerous Neo-Pentecostal sects which are currently drawing many Catholics away from their faith, and, at the same time, it was also an appeal to all of us to uncover and bear witness to the beauty and truth hidden in the age-old tradition of our faith.

During the visit Benedict also did not shy away from the task of denouncing, in clear words, the economic and social evils in the region. Brazil is, in fact, a land of great social inequalities. It is a country where 2 percent of the population owns 64 percent of the overall wealth, where 42 million people live on merely $2 a day, and where 70 percent of the people live in huge sprawling cities where posh areas lie side by side with immense shantytowns. But woe betide if the Church dealt with these problems in such a way as to lose her independence from politics: this would only diminish the value of her work in favour of the poor. In Benedict’s view, this is the only way for Latin America to remain the ‘continent of peace’, an expression dear to John Paul II which the German Pope reiterates by insisting on the fundamental values of life and the family.

The Pope has not only appealed to Catholics in Brazil, but to all people of good will as well. A fact which was not lost on Tribuna, a Brazilian lay newspaper, which ran an article stating that “The Pope has taught us that another civilisation exists, and has spurred us to talk about it. This is proof that there is light at the end of the tunnel”.