It is autumn in Sao Paolo and at the shrine of the Aparecida in Brazil, on the Tropic of Capricorn, and the temperatures are mild.But his upcoming visit to that land, from May 9-14, will be a trial by fire for Benedict XVI.
In the two years of his pontificate, neither Brazil nor Latin America has ever appeared at the center of his attention, in spite of the fact that five hundred million Catholics live there – almost half of the one billion, one hundred million Catholics worldwide.
Joseph Ratzinger displayed flashes of passion for this continent in the first months after his election as pope.
He was the one who chose, for July 7, 2005, the theme of the fifth general conference of the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean: “Disciples and missionaries of Jesus Christ.”
It is the fifth after the meetings in Rio de Janiero in 1995, in Medellín in 1968, in Puebla in 1979, and in Santo Domingo in 1992. It was he who wanted that the other phrase of the title – “That all may have life” – should end by specifying: “in Him.”
And that the statement of Jesus himself should be added: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He was the one who established the date and the place.
In October of 2005, during the synod of bishops, meeting with some of the South American cardinals he asked them point blank what was the most frequented Marian shrine in Brazil.
“L’Aparecida,” they answered him. And the pope: “That’s where you will meet. In May of 2007. And I’ll be there.”
But he then completely delegated the preparatory phase to others: in the curia to cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the congregation for the bishops and president of the pontifical commission for Latin America, and across the Atlantic to cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, archbishop of Santiago, Chile, and the current president of CELAM, the Latin American episcopal council.
Cardinal Re has been for years the chief architect of the appointment of new bishops in Latin America, with this pope and the previous one.
So it is due in large part to him if the Latin American episcopate is so sorely lacking today in outstanding figures and reliable, visionary guides.
The exceptions are rare.
Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is one of these: but since the beginning of preparations for the conference in Aparecida, he has kept his distance and has put up insurmountable opposition to Benedict XVI’s own request that he move to Rome to become head of a curia dicastery.
Last October, the pope brought to the Vatican the archbishop of Sao Paolo, Brazil, cardinal Cláudio Hummes, as prefect of the congregation for the clergy.
But this has had no visible effect so far. Hummes knows from direct experience that the clergy is one of the critical points for the Church on that continent.
Except in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, there are very few native priests – one for every fifteen thousand baptized persons – ten times fewer than in Europe or North America.
Apart from being very few in number, the priests are poorly educated. Concubinage is a common practice in the rural areas and in the Andes. In many churches and parishes, the Sunday Mass is celebrated rarely, and typically in a haphazard manner: this explains the low rates of regular participation at Mass on the continent, even though it is so thoroughly Catholic.
The seminaries are also very uneven in quality. In the places where vocations to the priesthood are on the rise – in some of the more vibrant dioceses, in some of the Charismatic communities – the greatest difficulty for the bishop or head of a community is that of finding a trustworthy seminary.
All of this is very well known, but in the preparatory documents for the conference in Aparecida, and even in the draft of the lengthy concluding document, already in secret circulation in the Vatican offices, there is only the faintest trace of these issues.
On January 20 of this year, and then on February 17, Benedict XVI gave the only two speeches that he has dedicated to the topic so far: the first was addressed to the members of the pontifical council for Latin America, and the second to the nuncios of that continent.
Both were routine speeches, produced in the offices of cardinal Re, without any passages displaying the pope’s own hand and mind, which are very recognizable in his own personal writing. Just as routine was the appointment of the 266 participants for the conference in Aparecida, including member bishops, guests, observers, and experts.
Of the sixteen that were to be chosen by Benedict XVI, eleven were obligatory insofar as they are the heads of offices in the curia. The only one who stands out among the remaining five is cardinal Marc Ouellet, archbishop of Québec, who despite being Canadian is much more competent in this area than many of his Latin American colleagues.
But there are very strong reasons why the Aparecida conference should enter into history, just as did – for other reasons – two of the continental meetings that preceded it: the one in Medellín, Colombia in 1968, and the one in Puebla, Mexico in 1979.
The address that John Paul II delivered in Puebla had a strong impact, inaugurating the decade-long battle that Rome would fight and win, with the unyielding support of then-cardinal Ratzinger, against the Marxist utopianism disguised as liberation theology.
But a great deal has changed since then.
When Karol Wojtyla set foot in Mexico in 1979, and in Brazil the following year, there were reactionary and even bloody regimes in various countries on the continent.
Today, the Church faces the opposite challenge – and in certain ways a more arduous one. Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina are headed by the progressive parties of Lula, Michelle Bachelet, Vázquez, and Kirchner, the bearers of a secularist view similar to the one in the northern regions of the world.
Meanwhile, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua are dominated by the populism of Chávez, Morales, Correa, and Ortega. The Marxism dear to liberation theology is holding out only in Cuba.
The religion of the new regimes is, if anything, that of nativism, and the myths of pre-Christian America. But equally drastic changes have taken place on the religious terrain.
In 1980, when John Paul II went to Brazil for the first time, Catholics had a near monopoly with 89 percent of the population.
In the 2000 census, they had fallen to 74 percent, and today in Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, and the urban areas, they are under 60 percent.
At the same time, there has been a rise in the number of people with no religion at all – from 1.6 percent in 1980 to 7.4 percent in 2000 – but above all in the number of Pentacostalist Protestants. These latter have gone from 5 percent in 1980 to 15 percent, and above 20 percent in the urban areas.
But there’s more: the spirit of Pentacostalism is also drawing a growing number of followers among Catholics who are remaining members of their Church.
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, in a detailed survey conducted in 2006, found that this tendency can be ascribed to one out of every three Catholics in Brazil.
This tendency to a large extent opposes the pressure of secularization and aligns itself with a form of Christianity that is puritanical, communitarian, taking its inspiration from above; a defender of life and the family, active on the public stage, and displaying a strong missionary spirit.
In Santo Domingo in 1992, John Paul II branded the Pentecostal Protestant communities as “ravenous wolves,” and in effect they are often aggressively hostile toward the symbols of Catholicism, from the Virgin Mary to the pope.
Ratzinger himself, in a conference on May 13, 2004, accused the United States of promoting “the protestantization of Latin America and the dissolution of the Catholic Church.”
But as pope, last February 17, he instead called upon the Church to examine itself.
If so many faithful are abandoning this and going to the Penetecostal communities – a phenomenon also found on a wide scale in Africa, Asia, and North America – it is because they are thirsty for a living, real Jesus whom the Church proclaims too feebly.
Such as the humanized and politicized Jesus in the books by Jon Sobrino, the liberation theologian condemned last winter by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith.
For Benedict XVI, Jesus is decidedly the central issue, including for Latin America.
Who knows how, in Sao Paolo and Aparecida, he will finally be able to speak to the continent, and to touch its heart?
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