Pastors for the Continent of Promises
This most Catholic of all the continents is fast becoming less so as religious sects convert millions while millions more become part of the secularized consumer society. Will Latin America be a continent of lost opportunity?

BY JESUS COLINA-DIEZ

With its more than 400 million Catholics, Latin America is, without a doubt, the "Catholic continent". Indeed, these numbers have emboldened more than one observer to speak of Latin America as "the continent of hope." But the reality is otherwise, for Latin America risks becoming the continent of shattered hopes and broken promises.
According to a study Inside the Vatican has conducted on the basis of the most recent official statistics available, Latin America’s 400 million Catholics make up 42% of all the Catholics in the world. Yet, according to the statistics, Latin America lags the rest of the world in almost every other category. One might argue that the burgeoning Catholic populations of Latin America are the "most neglected" in the world.

To provide pastoral assistance to these 400 million souls, there are 7,358 fewer priests than in North America, where there are only 68 million Catholics. In Latin America, the so-called "Catholic continent," there is one priest for every 7,200 Catholics; in North America, the figure is one priest for every 1,072 Catholics, and in Europe, one priest for every 1,310 Catholics. Even in "forgotten" Africa, there is a ratio of one priest for every 4,393 Catholics.
What is the result of this lack of pastoral care? It is the rise of religious sects and the increasing "de-Catholization" of the continent as people turn to materialism and leave the faith behind. As St. Paul explained, the word of God must be preached, and unless it is, the faith will not be transmitted: "How will they be able to believe if they have not heard?" (Rom. 10, 14).

This problem is aggravated by the lack of Church structures. In Central America, for example, there are almost 7,000 Catholics for each "pastoral center." In the rest of Latin America, the number exceeds 4,000 per center. This is in sharp contrast with Africa, for example, where there are 1,174 Catholics for each pastoral center. The problem is so massive that a question leaps spontaneously to mind: in another century, will Latin America still be Catholic?
In their efforts to respond to these grave problems, John Paul II and Paul VI before him have taken special care in choosing the men who would lead this Church: the bishops and, above all, the cardinals, the chief counselors of a Pope.
From the Second Vatican Council to the present, the number of Latin American cardinals has grown markedly, but even more dramatic has been the increasing influence of these Latin American leaders, who have come to occupy important posts in the Roman Curia. What concerns and perspectives do these Latin American cardinals share? What role are they playing in the Church as we approach the Third Millennium?

If all Latin American cardinals have one characteristic in common, it is that they are "pastors." All have had an excellent theological formation, but we do not find among them the "theologian-cardinals" one can find, for example, in Germany, Italy and in some other countries. Nor do we find among them men notable for their managerial skills or for the administration of their dioceses, as we find in the United States or in some of the wealthy European countries. And, even though in recent years some have moved into the Roman Curia, none has been formed in this environment, or in the Church’s diplomatic service, as is the case with some of the European cardinals.

The Latin American cardinals come out of "hands on" pastoral work. They are directly involved with the often harsh, sometimes tragic, day-to-day struggles of the souls entrusted to their care. It is not by chance that the Latin American Church is a model of commitment to the poor and humble in society. Though this commitment has sometimes overflowed into revolutionary or near-revolutionary positions — the conflict during the 1980s between the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and some Latin American proponents of Liberation Theology is a case in point — it is very evident that the "Princes of the Church" in Central and South America are in agreement with this commitment.

The Latin American country with the largest number of cardinals is Brazil with five. In Brazil we find ample evidence of pastors deeply involved in the social and economic problems of their people. In the interviews gathered in the process of preparing the book Cardinali del Terzo Millennio, all five of the Brazilian cardinals, at a certain moment during their interviews, testify to the fundamental role the issue of social justice has played in their lives.
For Cardinal Eugenio Araujo Sales, archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, "the fight against poverty and social injustice constitutes the second great challenge posed to the conscience of Brazilian Christians by the coming of the Third Millennium." (The first great challenge, for Sales, is of a doctrinal and philosophical nature: "the dissent from the magisterium of Peter by well-organized minorities... and the spread of a false concept of liberty that, instead of increasing human dignity, degrades it.")

Of the same mind is Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, archbishop of Sao Paolo. Arns, after the challenge of announcing the Gospel and of making all Christians into real missionaries, sees the defense of human rights as the Church’s greatest challenge. He explains his understanding of the concept of human dignity by citing St. Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 180 A.D.): "Man fully alive is the glory of God."

Cardinal Aloisius Lorscheider is even more specific about this commitment. In his interview for Cardinali del Terzo Millennio, Lorscheider specifically calls for "land reform" in Brazil. "We need this because without true agrarian reform we cannot make real forward progress," Lorscheider said. He also speaks of the fight against political and business corruption, and asks that the Church’s social teaching be widely taught so that "every Brazilian may become an active participant in his own liberation and his own development."

The "street-children" of Brazil are one of the great concerns of Cardinal Lucas Moreira Neves, archbishop of Sao Paolo. He has committed his diocese to helping these abandoned children, setting up a reception house for them. In his interview, he also clarified the present status of Liberation Theology, that theology which has made the "preferential option for the poor" the center of its thought. "Today there are many different liberation theologies," said Moreira Neves, whom many Vatican journalists consider "papabile," that is, a leading candidate in the event of a papal conclave. "To sum them up in two main branches, I would say that the first type aims to work out a theology in the light of the word of God, of the magisterium of the Church and of the theological tradition of 2,000 years with regard to problems linked to social justice, human rights, equity in human relations. The second, on the other hand, seeks to analyze society on the basis of Marxist teachings." Thus, the cardinal is in strong support of liberation theology — but only if it responds to the criteria of the Church rather than of Marx.

In the gathering of the Latin American bishops in Santo Domingo (1992), Moreira Neves encouraged his fellow bishops to take up the challenge represented by "inculturation." The adaptation of the Gospel to modern reality has become a central concern of Latin American theology. For Moreira Neves, to bring about a true "inculturation," Catholics must first of all become imbued with the spirit and message of the Gospels. The result, he argues, will be that a given culture will be penetrated and changed from within, leaving everything intact that is compatible with the Gospel. For him, the conclusion is clear: "Inculturation is not the assassination of culture; on the contrary, it offers to culture a deeper, more Christian humanism."

Cardinal Jose Falcao Freire, archbishop of Brasilia, the new capital of the country, also speaks of the great social problems his country faces in the new millenium: "Social injustice and violence. The gap between the wealthy and the poor is widening. The violence erupting in many different forms."

Falcao Freire emphasizes something else that his fellow cardinals also emphasized:
unity with the Successor of Peter.
The problems of Brazil, and of the Church in Brazil, are enormous. To address them, the Pope can count on the help of five men who are faithful to him and close to their people.

The four Argentine cardinals, in their interviews in Cardinali del Terzo Millennio, gave surprisingly concrete answers when asked about the problems facing the Church.

Eduardo Pironio is one of the first Latin Americans to become part of the Roman Curia. Paul VI called him to oversee the religious men and women of the world as head of the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life. In the last conclave (1978), his name appeared on journalists’ lists of cardinals who were "papabile."
Since 1984, Pironio has been asked by Pope John Paul II to head the Pontifical Council for the Laity. Thus, Pironio has worked for the past 12 years to respond to the challenges facing the Church by focusing on the formation of lay people. "My mission now," he says, "is precisely to animate, organize and encourage lay people in ‘comunione eccelesiale’ (ecclesial communion)."

It is an important and not always easy task, one which must not be confused with "clericalizing" the laity, he said.
"We do not turn to the laity because we are lacking priests and religious," Pironio said. "We turn to them to assist them to fulfill their own ecclesial-sacramental responsibility, a responsibility they acquire through their baptism, confirmation and marriage."

Cardinal Juan Carlos Aramburu, archbishop emeritus of Buenos Aires, has made the promotion of priestly vocations one of his priorities in meeting the crisis facing the Church in his county. He regards this as one of the great accomplishments of his 23 years of pastoral work in Buenos Aires: "I was able to give a great impulse to priestly vocations in my archdiocese, despite the fact that it was a difficult period due to the proliferation of radical liberationist movements."

For Cardinal Raul Francisco Primatesta, the emergence of sects, which he says have "invaded" Latin America, is in part a sign that the Church has been ineffective and unresponsive. "The people run after the sects because often they do not find what they are looking for in the Church," said the archbishop of Cordoba. "Instead of talking about fighting against the sects, we ought to be focusing on announcing the Church’s Gospel message in a stronger, more effective way."

Mexico is the only country in the world where a cardinal has recently been murdered. On May 24 two years ago, in the airport of Guadalajara, Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo was shot to death by gunmen who later claimed they "mistook" Posadas for a narcotics trafficker. (Eyewitnesses said it appeared the gunmen saw the cardinal clearly, knew who he was, and shot him intentionally. The case has never been completely solved and remains extremely mysterious.)

Juan Sandoval Iniguez took Posadas’ post as head of one of the dioceses with the largest number of priestly vocations in the world, Guadalajara. Since then, Sandoval has had to fight against politicians, judges, police officials and even some groups within the Catholic Church to shed light on the assassination. But Sandoval is not giving up. He, like his predecessor, knows that the Church must "apply the Gospel in everyday life, and help people understand that all men are brothers, children of the same God, and that, if there is love, there will be sufficient room on earth for everyone." Yet Sandoval, who preaches this message of charity, has, like his predecessor Cardinal Posadas, begun to receive death threats.

Cardinal Adolfo Antonio Suarez Rivera, archbishop of Monterrey, was born in the region of Chiapas, presently torn by violence due to the armed conflict pitting the government against Zapatista insurrectionists. The conflict began the same day the NAFTA agreement, the commercial accord between Mexico, Canada and the US to lower tariffs and trade barriers between the three countries, was signed. "Mexico must live alongside a very powerful neighbor: the United States," Suarez Rivera said. "But our people are able to meet the challenge, they know how to defend their culture and their religious practice." And he added: "The Holy Father has proposed the cancellation of the debts of the Third World on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Year 2000. Our debts are very large, and repaying them is making the life of our people very difficult. The rich countries of the North should embrace this papal suggestion, keeping in mind that we are all part of one great human family."

Puerto Rico is closer to the United States than any other Latin American country due to its political ties to America, and its geographical proximity. In the declarations of Cardinal Luis Aponte Martinez, Archbishop of San Juan de Puerto Rico, this closeness is a pastoral challenge: "The spread of the ‘culture of death,’ with abortion, euthanasia, and war, is very worrisome. Television has great influence on the formation of our young people. By means of television from America, we import everything, for good and for evil. Puerto Rico is also a stopping point on the drug routes that go from South America to the United States. Though drug possession is forbidden and punished severely, the route remains open and the crime level, which is high, is continually increasing."
For this reason, the archbishop — one of 18 children — does not see a solution to present problems without reinforcing family values and the Catholic faith. "Unfortunately, material progress does not seem to be accompanied by an authentic spiritual progress." For Aponte Martinez, the sole solution for Latin America lies in "the centrality of Christ." Only in Christ, present "yesterday, today and tomorrow," can the Latin Americans find the solution to their problems, he said.

With regard to the relations between Latin America and the United States, John Paul II has launched an initiative without precedent: a Synod for all of the Western Hemisphere. In order to prepare for this millennium, for the first time, the bishops of both Americas, North and South, will sit at the same table to discuss their problems and how best to address them. It is thought that the US and Canadian bishops can help the Latin Americans with their experience in organizing structures for evangelization and pastoral work. For their part, the Latin Americans are expected to testify to the new strength they have experienced thanks to the communities and movements of lay people. On the one hand, the immigration of Hispanics into the US and Canada, and, on the other, the double invasion into Latin America of the materialist and consumerist American mentality and of religious sects, are combining to present difficult challenges for the "two lungs" of the American continent.

To speak of the new evangelization in Chile has special meaning. This country, which had to pass through grave crises during the past 30 years, now finds itself leading the continent in economic development. The Church, emerging from this period of turmoil, finds herself in a weakened state, and thus is "restructuring" herself by focusing on the formation of the laity.

In the country’s capital, Santiago, Carlos Oviedo Cavada sees the current situation this way: "For Latin America, this has been a very difficult century. We have suffered much as a result of totalitarianism. But the greatest challenge for us is to try to diminish the gap between the rich and the poor. The problem of poverty can be resolved in large measure through education, and the Church is quite active in this area." Thus, for Oviedo Cavada education is the best way to implement the "preferential option for the poor" that the Latin American bishops have said needs to mark the Church’s life and action in our time.

Many of the Latin American cardinals stressed in Cardinali del Terzo Millennio the great role that the family must play in preserving the Catholic roots of the continent. It is not by chance that the man chosen by the Pope to lead his strategy on behalf of the family comes from Latin America. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, lives this mission in an intensely existential way. This Colombian has entrusted us with his most intimate sentiments: "My mother, who died at the age of 44 due to a very painful illness, with her heroic and serene acceptance of her suffering taught me much more than many books of theology. When she fell sick, I was still a student of philosophy at the seminary of Bogota. She endured several years of great suffering. All the treatments and operations in the best hospitals of the United States were unable to cure her. Her courage and her ability to prepare my father for all he had to go through were astonishing. When, in my work, I speak of marriage and the ideal of the family, it is natural for me to think of the family I come from, because through my parents I was able to witness how it is possible to realize both ideals."

Central America, as John Paul II said during his most recent visit to Nicaragua (February 1996), was for many years the "testing ground" for the two superpowers. Central Americans had to fight a war that pitted the West against Marxism, a war they did not feel was their own. Two dramatic examples of this were Nicaragua and Cuba.
Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo showed the Sandinista regime of Daniel Ortega the revolutionary force of the Gospel when it is lived without distortions or affiliations with political factions. "After I was named bishop, I thought I would play an exclusively pastoral role. I wanted to ‘evangelize’ my people. Instead, the political situation of Nicaragua required that I become a ‘mediator.’ Above all a mediator with the Sandinistas, in three circumstances decisive for my country. We denounced injustices with Somoza, we lifted our voice against the Sandinistas, we have dialogued with donna Violeta [Violeta Chamorro, the leader of the post-Sandinista government]...
"Already during the years of the Somoza regime, the Church in Nicaragua had made the ‘preferential option for the poor,’" continued the cardinal of Managua. "The poor have always been at the center of our concern, but this has not led us to espouse any particular ideology. There is a liberation theology that has sound orientations. It is recognized also by the Holy See, and it is concerned with the welfare of the poor. The liberation theology that has, on the other hand, embraced the Marxist ideology, has not produced good fruits, prescinding from its intentions."
Nevertheless, his historic personal struggle against the Sandinista regime has not carried Obando Bravo to the opposite extreme: "In addition to Marxism, I am also opposed to unrestrained capitalism and the ideology of neoliberalism."
Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino also has had to struggle against a communist regime, this time that of Fidel Castro in Cuba. The cardinal of San Cristobal de l’Avana explained to us the great difference between Marxism and Christianity in the struggle against social injustice: "In the 1960s both in America and in Europe, the revolutionary movements of the left, which supported armed guerrilla movements and the use of violence, were interpreted in a way that I would term ‘romantic.’ But during his trip to Colombia, Paul VI, with prophetic words, said ‘no’ to violence. In those years, it was difficult to preach the Gospel of love, of truth, of life, of reconciliation, of justice, and above all, of peace. But to change a society that even the Church has repeatedly said, and still says today, is really unjust, it was not necessary to shed blood, but rather to follow the message left us by Jesus Christ." Concluded the cardinal: "Such a terrible reality can be changed only through the difficult way of love."

A typical example of the state of abandonment in which the Church in Latin America finds herself due to the lack of structures and priests is Equador. Cardinal Bernardino Echeverria Ruiz sums up his entire pastoral life in the word "construct." When in 1969 he was named archbishop of Guayaquil, the diocese of which he is today the archbishop emeritus, there were fewer than 71 churches, and a large number of these had been damaged by an earthquake. During his years of activity in this city, he has built 128 churches (he was compelled to supply the lack of Equadoran priests through the help of missionaries from 15 different countries). He also founded three publishing houses and launched three magazines.

Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez was the leader of the Latin American Church in recent years as the president of CELAM, the Latin American Bishops’ Conference. With a prudent hand he prepared and guided the IV Conference of the Latin American bishops held in Santo Domingo in conjunction with the 500th anniversary of the continent’s evangelization, in 1992.

This meeting brought about a change of course for the Church in Latin America. At Puebla, the previous conference, in 1979, the poor and the young were at the center of the "preferential option" of the Church. These young, however, were somewhat forgotten due to the strong emphasis on Liberation Theology.

Thus, at Santo Domingo there was talk not so much of a "preferential option" as of three priorities: the new evangelization, human development, and the evangelization of culture.

The first, the new evangelization, includes attention to the laity and the recognition of their work in the Church and in the world. Here also there was room found for attention to young people and to vocations, as well as to catechesis and the liturgy. In Santo Domingo, for the first time in history, the Church in Latin America took a missionary stance: under the first priority, this Church, where so many missionaries from Europe and more recently from North America have labored, began to send priests to other continents to evangelize other peoples.

The second priority of Santo Domingo was human development, which implies a "preferential option for the poor," but one that is "neither exclusive nor excluding." In this chapter, the bishops spoke also about the defense of life "from the moment of conception until its natural end," and of the family.

The third priority is the evangelization of culture. This third challenge has opened new horizons for the Church. The Church has re-evaluated the attention given to the middle classes, until now almost forgotten on this continent. There has also been new emphasis on pastoral outreach to native Indian cultures. The theologians of Liberation Theology who have abandoned the use of Marxist analysis as a method of interpreting the Gospels have found here a font of theological inspiration that is still quite new, but appears promising.

In this context, Santo Domingo made an appeal to the Church to use the modern means of social communication effectively. In truth, this challenge is beginning to be lost in mere rhetoric. In all the meetings of Latin American bishops, there is talk of the importance of this work, but up until now there have been no concrete initiatives, with the exception of the efforts of the Brazilian bishops to create a Catholic television channel.

Lastly, the Church in Latin America has begun to focus again on education. In the 1970s and 1980s, thousands of men and women religious abandoned Catholic schools because they were considered "places for the wealthy." Many left everything to go live in urban and suburban slums. Others found themselves in the midst of a great identity crisis and decided to leave the priesthood or religious life. Many Catholic schools were closed in those years.

Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, archbishop of Santo Domingo, sees in the Santo Domingo document the best solution to Latin America’s problems. In Cardinali del Terzo Millennio he says: "Having discussed the matter with many other bishops, I can say that this Conference has borne real fruit. We were able to take stock of what has happened in Latin America in these 500 years of history and of evangelization. The final document of the Conference has been translated into a number of languages, and in almost all of our countries, including mine, the Dominican Republic, it has been accepted as a model for pastoral planning."

Papal information – Home