Pope urges Bishops to stem Church's decline
Pope Benedict XVI summoned his bishops from across Latin America to Brazil’s most holy landmark today to direct them in the battle to keep Catholicism the dominant religious force in the region.
While Brazil is the church’s biggest stronghold on the planet, millions of Roman Catholics have joined evangelical Protestant churches in recent years, and the church’s moral code is challenged across Latin America by traditionally Catholic populations flouting its prohibitions on abortion, divorce and pre-marital sex.
In his first visit to the region where half the world’s Catholics live, Benedict gave a tough talk to Brazil’s bishops on Friday – and was expected to do again today after opening a conference of Latin American bishops with an open-air Mass.
More than 140,000 faithful waving flags from all parts of South America clogged a plaza outside Aparecida’s mammoth basilica – home to Brazil’s black Virgin Mary – to hear the Mass, cheering the pope as he motored through the crowd in the popemobile, waving to the masses.
Last night, Benedict implored the Virgin Mary to “protect the Brazilian and Latin American family” and energise Latin America’s priests and nuns with evangelical zeal.
“Pour out upon our brothers and sisters throughout Latin America a true missionary ardor, to spread faith and hope,” Benedict said.
After stressing the church’s moral teaching on abortion and sex during three days of events in Sao Paulo, South America’s largest city, Benedict yesterday turned to the issue of drug trafficking and its damage to society, threatening Latin American drug dealers with divine retribution.
“God will call you to account for your deeds,” Benedict warned drug dealers to cheers from recovering drug addicts at the “Fazenda da Esperanca,” or “Farm of Hope,” drug treatment centre near Aparecida.
Brazil and the rest of Latin America face dangerously high rates of drug abuse and traffickers must “reflect on the grave harm they are inflicting on countless young people and on adults from every level of society,” Benedict said.
“Human dignity cannot be trampled upon in this way,” the pope declared before a crowd of 6,000 outside the drug treatment centre founded by a German-born Franciscan friar.
Benedict later prayed to Brazil’s patron saint for help in restoring the church’s eroding influence in Latin America’s largest nation, where the number of Catholics has dropped sharply in recent decades while born-again Protestant congregations have added millions of faithful to their ranks.
The pope in Brazil has also spoken strongly against sex before marriage and immorality in the media that he insisted leads toward hedonism.
Waiting to catch a glimpse of the pope in the shadow of the basilica, 68-year-old Maria Costa said Brazilians needed the message from Benedict, and that his five-day visit to Brazil could make a difference.
“It should help revitalise the church,” she said. “Catholics weren’t feeling very good with the church, and that’s why so many were leaving. And I think that could change now. Let’s hope so.”
The pope will leave Aparecida for Rome after addressing the bishops, but they will spend another two weeks trying to determine how to reverse the church’s losses.
The black Virgin Mary, Brazil’s patron saint, is a three-foot-tall wooden statue pulled from a river in the 18th century by poor fishermen who were not catching any fish, and then caught loads in their nets.
Miracles were subsequently attributed to the statue, and so many pilgrims flocked to Aparecida that a basilica was built. It was inaugurated as a shrine in 1955.
