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REPORTS: LATIN AMERICA |
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Latin
America Marked by Pope's 25-Year
Tenure
Diego
Cevallos*
MEXICO CITY, (IPS) - In his 25 years
in the papacy, John Paul II visited as
many countries in Latin America and
the Caribbean, and his travels changed
the face of the Roman Catholic Church
in the region, pushing to the
sidelines its once vigorous
progressive wing.
In late September, the pope increased
the number of Latin American cardinals
from 21 to 24, a decision that
observers interpret as another step
towards shoring up doctrine-based
positions in the predominantly Roman
Catholic region as his health
deteriorates.
The 83-year-old pontiff suffers from
Parkinson's disease and arthritis and
recently has had difficulty speaking.
Nearly all of the 164 older prelates
and the 31 newer ones, who beginning
this month will comprise the Holy
Cardinalate, adhere to the current
theological line of the Vatican. Of
the total, 135 are younger than 80,
and therefore qualify to be named
successor to the elderly John Paul II
if he steps down or dies in the next
six months.
Karol Wojtyla, born in Poland, was
elected pope on Oct. 16, 1978. Since
then he has made 18 trips across the
Atlantic to Latin America and the
Caribbean. The first was in 1979, a
tour that included Santo Domingo,
Mexico and the Bahamas. The last was
in 2002, when he returned to Mexico
and also visited Guatemala.
In these journeys he gave communion to
dictators, criticised presidents,
called attention to church detractors
and marked the Vatican line.
He has nearly always been warmly
received by the faithful, although
there were times when the crowds
jeered him, as in 1983 in Nicaragua,
governed by the leftist Sandinista
junta, a government in which some
priests participated.
The moment has come to found a new
church ”for the third millennium,”
said John Paul II in his early
homilies, an objective that was
translated in Latin America and the
Caribbean as a clear shift in
direction for both church doctrine and
hierarchy.
Of the Latin American Catholic
prelates who participated in or
carried forward the Second Vatican
Council (1962-1966) -- seen as the
basis for what became known as
Liberation Theology -- almost none
remain in the top ranks of the Vatican
today.
Indeed, just five of the 135
elector-cardinals were not named by
the current pope.
In Brazil and Mexico, the two
countries with the most Catholics and
which the pope visited four and five
times, respectively, only a handful of
progressive-leaning bishops remain on
the church scenario.
Liberation Theology is based on the
notion that the Gospel of Christ
demands ”a preferential option for
the poor” and that the Catholic
Church should focus its efforts on
liberating people from poverty and
oppression.
Several Latin American priests known
for their close ties to Liberation
Theology came under investigation by
church authorities, and some were
penalised.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, director of
the Vatican's Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, presented a
long declaration in 1984 challenging
some of the principles of this
”theology of the poor”.
The most famous case was that of
Brazilian priest Leonardo Boff. The
Vatican imposed a penalty of
”obedient silence”, prompting Boff
to leave the priesthood.
In Mexico, bishop Samuel Ruiz, who
worked in the southern state of
Chiapas, stronghold of the Zapatista
guerrillas, was also investigated for
alleged deviation from church
doctrine. The Catholic hierarchy also
prohibited the indigenous deacons he
had appointed from exercising their
mandate.
”In my judgement the first apology
the Catholic Church would have to make
today would be to those poor defrauded
people... For being a rich church and
because, when others have supported
the poor, they were condemned as false
prophets,” Boff said in a recent
interview with a Mexican daily.
According to priest José Oscar Beozzo,
director of the Centre for
Evangelising Services and Popular
Education (CESEP), in Sao Paulo, the
25 years since John Paul II was
elected pope have followed ”a
negative and obstructive route.”
In Brazil ”an entire generation of
progressive-minded” priests has been
marginalized, Beozzo, author of a
history of the impacts of the various
popes in Brazil, told IPS.
Bishops recognised for their strong
careers in the Brazilian church's
progressive wing, like the late Helder
Cámara, were never promoted to
cardinal.
And other bishops, like Ivo
Lorscheiter, Luciano de Almeida and
Celso Queiroz were subject to veiled
recriminations, being relegated to
remote diocese in the country's
interior, said Beozzo.
Several theologians, including Pedro
Ribeiro de Oliveria and Clodovis Boff
(Leonardo's brother), were expelled
from the Catholic University of Rio de
Janeiro for their ties to the
Liberation Theology movement.
Beozzo believes that the Vatican
”made a mistake by confusing Latin
America with Eastern Europe,”
although he says the pope later
changed his discourse and began to
”criticise savage capitalism” and
uncontrolled economic globalisation.
Mexican theologian Carlos Monteverde
says the pope's actions during his
1983 visit to Nicaragua, when the
Sandinistas were in power, and during
his stops in Chile and Argentina,
where military dictatorships ruled,
reveals the Vatican's doctrinaire
position of the past 25 years.
In Nicaragua, speaking before more
than 700,000 people, John Paul II
criticised the government that had
emerged after the Sandinista National
Liberation Front defeated the Somoza
dictatorship, but the pope did not say
a word against the ”Contra”, the
Washington-financed paramilitaries who
tried to overthrow the Sandinistas.
Many Nicaraguans reacted to his
statements with shouts and jeers,
leading the pope to abandon protocol
and call repeatedly for ”silence”,
which only further angered the crowd.
The Central American country had just
recently seen the end of four decades
of dictatorship under the Somoza
family.
Later, in Chile and Argentina, the
pope had no hesitations in giving
communion to military dictators, and
made only tangential references to the
massive human rights violations
committed in those countries in the
1970s and 1980s.
In 1996, for the 50th wedding
anniversary of by then former Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990),
John Paul II and his right-hand man
Angel Sodano sent a photo of the pope
with an inscription citing Pinochet
and his wife as ”an exemplary
Christian couple”.
Instead of advancing, the Roman
Catholic Church has suffered a major
decline during the past quarter
century because it ”tried to
consolidate its traditional structures
without making the necessary
changes,” says Francisco Avendaño,
former director of the School of
Ecumenical Sciences at the National
University of Costa Rica.
”John Paul II, along with his
advisers, tried to rebuild the church
of the past,” Avendaño said in an
IPS interview.
As far as Liberation Theology, he
commented that the pope ”neutralised
it by appointing conservative bishops
and priests.”
According to Mexican theologian
Monteverde, the positions the Vatican
has taken in the past 25 years were
affected by the dismantling of the
European communist bloc, a process in
which the pope played an important
role.
With the emergence of a unipolar
international political scenario
controlled by the United States, after
the Soviet Union fell, John Paul II
began harsh criticisms of ”savage
capitalism”. In subsequent trips to
Latin America, he placed greater
emphasis on economic justice and
respect for human rights.
Such was the case in his 1998 visit to
socialist-run Cuba, where he met with
representatives of the political and
economic spheres and did not take the
hardline used years earlier in
Nicaragua.
And more recently, he was an outspoken
critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
No one can say that John Paul II did
not change the Catholic Church in
Latin America, leading it away from
its progressive tendencies of the
1960s and early 1970s to a more
conservative approach with an accent
on spiritual salvation, concludes
Monteverde.
It will be this ”new Catholic
Church” that on Oct. 16 celebrates
the 25 years of the Polish Wojtyla in
the papacy.
Five days later, in a special
ceremony, the Vatican will formalise
the elevation to cardinal of the 31
who were appointed in late September,
three from Latin America, for a
Cardinalate of 195.
Of that total, 135 have the authority
to elect the successor to John Paul II
and are themselves candidates to be
the spiritual leader of more than a
billion Roman Catholics around the
world.
* With reporting by Mario Osava
(Brazil), María Cecilia Espinosa
(Chile), Humberto Márquez (Venezuela)
and José Eduardo Mora (Costa Rica).
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