POPE BENEDICT'S VISIT TO SAO PAULO

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E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: SCUL PREL PGOV PINR SOCI BR
SUBJECT: POPE BENEDICT'S VISIT TO SAO PAULO

REF: (A) VATICAN 85; (B) SAO PAULO 250

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SUMMARY
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1. Pope Benedict XVI's four-day visit to Sao Paulo, the
first trip to Latin America of his papacy, was received
with popular enthusiasm and saturation media coverage. In
his several sermons and other public utterances, the Pope
called on the faithful to adhere to Church rules on
personal morality and to push back against the
materialistic and secular values promoted by the mass
media. In his meeting with President Lula, the Pope spoke
of his hopes to reach agreement on a concordat that would
afford the Church a special status in Brazil. Perhaps
inevitably, his visit intensified the public debate
surrounding proposals to legalize abortion in Brazil. Pope
Benedict also generated some controversy when, in his
address inaugurating the Fifth General Conference of
Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM),he
asserted that the spreading of the gospel during
colonization did not represent "alienation of pre-Columbian
cultures nor the imposition of a foreign culture." Though
Brazilians gave the Pope a hearty welcome and especially
appreciated the canonization of a revered 18th century
friar, it is unclear to what extent and for how long his
message will resonate here. End Summary.

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THE ABORTION DEBATE INTENSIFIES
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2. A crowd estimated at about 15,000 gathered late on the
afternoon of May 9 in downtown Sao Paulo in front of the
monastery where the Pope was to be lodged. Upon arrival,
Pope Benedict appeared on the balcony to deliver brief
remarks and a blessing. By then, he had already sparked
controversy with comments he made in an interview with
traveling press on the plane. Asked about the legalization
of abortion in Mexico, the Pope indicated that when some
Mexican bishops claimed that deputies who voted in favor of
legalization had excommunicated themselves from the Church,
this was "not something arbitrary" they were asserting, but
rather a provision of canon law.


3. In the days leading up to the visit, the abortion issue
was the subject of some intemperate exchanges between
government and Brazilian church officials. Health Minister
Jose Temporao, accused some sectors of the Church of making
"aggressive statements" that were "far from Jesus's
teachings." Special Secretary for Women's Policy Nilcea
Freire opined that the Church and fundamentalist religious
groups should not act as "censors" of public debate. Dom
Geraldo Majella, Archbishop of Salvador and outgoing
president of the National Conference of Bishops (CNBB),
accused the government of promoting promiscuity via its sex
education program and by calling for a public debate on
legalizing abortion. President Lula split the difference
by stressing on the one hand that abortion is first and
foremost a public health question (though he as a Catholic
personally opposes it) while noting at the same time that
the Church is free to make its own decisions and take its
own positions. He subsequently indicated that it was up to
Congress to decide whether to convoke a plebiscite on the
question of legalizing first-trimester abortions, but that
his administration would not sponsor such a proposal, as
Minister Temporao had proposed. The GoB makes condoms
available at no cost as part of its programs combating AIDS
and sexually transmitted diseases. Abortion is illegal in
Brazil, except in cases of rape or when the life of the
mother is endangered by the pregnancy, but an estimated one
million clandestine abortions are performed every year, and
some experts believe the figure is much higher.


4. In the same interview, the Pope also reiterated his low
opinion of liberation theology, asserting that "it is now
clear that those easy millenarianisms, which promise
revolutions and also sudden conditions for a just life,
were mistaken. Today everyone knows that." At the same
time, he acknowledged that the Church has been losing

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members in Latin America and credited the "sects" (the
growing evangelical and Pentecostal denominations) with
giving the faithful something they were not getting from
the Church, which he said needs to be more dynamic and
missionary in its approach. According to a recent
Datafolha poll, Catholics now make up about 64 percent of
Brazil's population, down from 75 percent in 1994, the
first year the poll was conducted. Of those, about one
third attend Mass every Sunday. Pentecostals now comprise
17 percent of all Brazilians, and other evangelical groups
5 percent.

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CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS
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5. On May 10, the Pope met with President Lula and with
Sao Paulo Governor Jose Serra. Per ref A, the signing of a
concordat between Brazil and the Vatican was originally
contemplated as a deliverable for this visit, but it soon
became apparent that there wasn't enough time to conclude
the negotiations. Instead, Lula and the Pope expressed the
hope of signing it before the end of Benedict's papacy, or
of Lula's presidency (i.e., the end of 2010). The Foreign
Ministry is reportedly concerned that certain aspects of
the text proposed by the Vatican could violate the
principle of separation of church and state and might also,
by granting the Church a privileged status, discriminate
against other faiths. After the meeting, GoB officials
quoted Lula as having told the Pope that, "Our task is to
preserve and consolidate the lay state and have religion
deal with spirituality and social problems." One point of
divergence appears to be a Vatican proposal to make
religious education obligatory in public schools. Though
the draft agreement reportedly does not mention abortion,
many commentators expressed concern that a concordat would
increase the Church's influence and thereby strengthen its
hand in opposing legalization.


6. The Pope also had a brief ecumenical encounter with a
group of religious leaders. Participants included the
President of the World Council of Churches, leaders of
traditional Protestant (Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian)
and Orthodox (Greek, Syrian) denominations, as well as
Rabbi Henry Sobel of the Sao Paulo Jewish Congregation and
Sheikh Armando Hussein Saleh, representing Muslims. Some
participants expressed disappointment afterwards that there
was not sufficient time for any meaningful or substantive
dialogue; the Pope greeted each of the religious leaders
and delivered brief remarks on the importance of religions
working together in the cause of God. In addition, some
observers pointed out that by reaching out to leaders of
traditional religions, the Pope was essentially ignoring
other important religious communities, especially the
vibrant, growing evangelical and Pentecostal movements as
well as Afro-Brazilian syncretic religions. Others
commented that neither Rabbi Sobel nor Sheikh Saleh can be
considered truly representative of the Jewish and Muslim
communities.

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FAMILY VALUES
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7. Later the same day, the Pope preached to a crowd of
approximately 40,000 young people from all over Latin
America assembled in the city's main soccer stadium, with
some 15,000 more watching on big screens outside, a smaller
audience than expected by organizers. His address was
devoted almost entirely to questions of personal morality.
Warning that they could become prey to the "assaults of
materialism and laicism," the Pope called upon Latin
American youth to venerate the family, respect the sanctity
of marriage, and practice fidelity and chastity. He also
took the opportunity to deplore the environmental
devastation of the Amazon region and the "threats to the
dignity of its people." The plight of the Amazon is the
focus of the CNBB's 2007 Fraternity Campaign.


8. The high point of the Pope's visit came on May 11, when
he said Mass for some 800,000 faithful - again, fewer than

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the million that organizers had projected, due perhaps in
part to the fact that the Mass was broadcast live on
television - at an Air Force base in the northern part of
the city. He used the occasion to canonize Antonio Galvao,
an enormously popular 18th century friar who is the first
Brazilian-born person to become a saint. His unusual
albeit not unprecedented decision to celebrate the
canonization in the new saint's home country instead of in
Rome was portrayed by the Vatican as the Pope's special
gift to Brazil, making is possible for Frei Galvao's
devotees (and the beneficiaries of one of his certified
miracles) to be present. In his sermon, the Pope
reiterated and expanded on some of the themes from his
encounter with youth, calling on the faithful to emulate
Frei Galvao and live "clean lives with clear souls and
simple intelligence," and to "say no to those media of
social communication that make a mockery of the sanctity of
marriage and virginity before marriage."


9. In a meeting with Brazilian bishops in Sao Paulo
Cathedral, the Pope expressed concern for those among the
faithful who, due to the fragility of their faith, are most
vulnerable to "the aggressive proselytism of sects" and are
"incapable of resisting the onslaught of agnosticism,
relativism, and laicism." Noting that these are hard times
for the Church, he lamented that "crimes against life are
being justified in the name of individual freedom; attempts
are made against human dignity; the wound of divorce and
free unions is festering." He also reiterated the
importance of priestly celibacy and stressed the need for a
good spiritual life to avoid "the risk of deviations in the
area of sexuality."


10. The Pope traveled from Sao Paulo to the national
shrine of Nossa Senhora Aparecida in the interior of Sao
Paulo state. On May 12, he visited the Estate of Hope in
nearby Guaratingueta (Frei Galvao's hometown),a
rehabilitation center for the chemically dependent operated
by the Church. Here he listened as some of the center's
400 recovering addicts told their life's story. He
attributed the phenomenon of drug abuse to "a consumer
society turned away from God" and warned that "God will
demand satisfaction" from drug traffickers.

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ADDRESS TO THE CONFERENCE
--------------


11. On his last day in Brazil, Pope Benedict said Mass at
the Shrine of Aparecida and formally opened the Fifth
General Conference of Bishops of Latin America and the
Caribbean (CELAM). In his inaugural remarks, the Pope
called upon the bishops to help the people "suppress the
grave social inequalities and enormous differences in
access to goods" that inhibit their ability to enjoy a full
life "in the most human conditions, free from the threat of
hunger and all forms of violence." He praised ecclesial
church communities throughout the region for stimulating
lay participation in educational and assistance programs,
but also expressed concern about "a certain weakening of
Christian life in the whole of society...due to secularism,
hedonism, indifference, and the proselytism of numerous
sects, animist religions, and new pseudo-religious
expressions." The Church, Benedict said, is "the advocate
for justice and for the poor, precisely by not identifying
itself with politicians or with party interests," but
rather by maintaining its independence and "teaching great
standards and irreducible truths." He criticized both
capitalism and Marxism for their failure to appreciate the
need for individual morality. He highlighted the tragic
legacy of Marxist governments and decried conditions in the
western world, "where the distance between rich and poor
grows constantly and a disturbing degradation of human
dignity is produced with drugs, alcohol, and other subtle
mirages of happiness."


12. It was in this address that the Pope, in assessing the
significance of Christianity's historical pre-eminence in
Latin America and the Caribbean, made a comment that he was
later obliged to clarify. For the peoples of the region,
he said, acceptance of the faith meant "getting to know and

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accept Christ, the unknown God that their forebears,
without knowing it, were searching for in their rich
religious traditions...In fact, the announcement of Jesus
and his Gospel at no time involved an alienation of pre-
Columbian cultures, nor was it an imposition of a foreign
culture. Authentic cultures are not closed around
themselves nor petrified in a determined moment of history,
but rather are open and even seek out encounters with other
cultures, hoping to find universality in the encounter..."
Indigenous leaders, the Brazilian government agency for the
indigenous, and NGOs immediately took issue with this
formulation, arguing that for many indigenous peoples,
Spanish and Portuguese colonization and the Church's
participation in it did in fact involve forced conversion
and other serious violations of human rights. Venezuelan
President Chavez opined that the Pope should ask Latin
America's indigenous for forgiveness for the "genocide."
Ten days later in Rome, while recalling his visit to
Brazil, the Pope tried to mend fences by acknowledging that
"The memory of a glorious past cannot ignore the shadows
that accompanied the evangelization of the Latin American
continent."

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ONE BISHOP'S VIEWS
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13. In the opinion of Auxiliary Bishop Pedro Luiz
Stringhini, who heads the Sao Paulo Archdiocese's pastoral
programs, the Pope, in stressing family and moral issues as
opposed to social questions, was merely recognizing and
adapting to generational change. Young people, Bishop
Pedro said, are for the most part not as interested in
social action as his own generation was. And while taking
care of the poor, infirm, elderly, and marginalized
populations had always been an important part of the
Church's mission, pre-dating Marx by many centuries, the
liberation theologians were wrong to frame the social
debate in the language of Marxist dialectic. Furthermore,
while preaching social revolution was at least
understandable when Brazil and much of Latin America were
living under military dictatorship, it was less defensible
now.


14. Liberation theology made an enormous contribution to
Brazil, Stringhini acknowledged, by stimulating the
formation of the ecclesial base communities that played a
major role in opposing the dictatorship and continue to
work to ameliorate the plight of the poor, but in the
process the Church made the costly error of giving short
shrift to the spiritual side of its mission. Referring to
the Church's "preferential option for the poor," Stringhini
remarked ruefully that "we opted for the poor, and the poor
opted for the evangelical churches." The faithful, he
said, expected the Pope and other Catholic leaders to act
as moral policemen, and would have been disappointed if he
hadn't reiterated Church teaching on. Stringhini also
noted that unlike the 1968 CELAM meeting in Medellin, this
year's CELAM would generate continuity in the Church's
profile in the region and not bring about fundamental
change.

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A SCHOLAR'S ANALYSIS
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15. According to Fernando Altemeyer, Professor of Theology
at the Catholic University (PUC) of Sao Paulo, Pope
Benedict won over a great many Brazilians just by showing
up. Many among the faithful, Altemeyer said, experienced
some trepidation about his visit and his entire papacy,
remembering him as the German "Panzer Cardinal" who had
disciplined a number of Brazilian and other priests and
theologians for straying from orthodoxy, in most cases
because they were promoting or defending liberation
theology. Though he was certainly no John Paul II,
Benedict demonstrated that he was a genuine human being who
appreciated Brazilians and Latin Americans. He appeared to
speak Portuguese quite well (though Altemeyer noted that
for the most part he was actually just reading speeches and
sermons),and when he had trouble communicating, he simply

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slipped into Spanish or Italian, and it worked. His
message was also generally well received, in part because
it was what his audience expected him to say. Many of the
young who went to see him were quite conservative - tickets
to the stadium event went to youths hand-picked by Church
leaders - and appreciated his emphasis on family values.


16. That is not to say, Altemeyer noted, that young people
practice the sexual morality the Pope preached. Indeed,
surveys show that on questions of sexuality and family
planning, a sort of mutual "don't ask, don't tell"
understanding operates in much of Latin America:
Parishioners for the most part don't ask their priests for
guidance on such questions, and don't tell them if they are
cohabiting or using contraceptives; priests generally don't
ask parishioners about the intimate aspects of their lives
and don't tell them they have to abide by rigid rules.


17. The reason the issue of a possible concordat sparked
concern among Brazilians, Altemeyer said, is that many of
the republican leaders who overthrew Emperor Pedro II were
freemasons who immediately severed all connection between
Church and state. This turned out to be one of the best
things that ever happened to the Catholic Church in Brazil,
he noted, because the Church was forced to learn how to
fend for itself and at the same time was freed from state
control. The strict separation has become part of the
national psyche. Marriage can be either civil or religious
or both, and divorce has been legal for thirty years.
While religion should be taught in public schools as part
of Brazil's history and culture, Altemeyer argued, even
most Catholics do not want to see Catholic teaching as part
of the public education curriculum. The Vatican has
different kinds of concordats with different countries,
Altemeyer said, and it is difficult to know just what the
Vatican has in mind for Brazil because the draft document
is not publicly available. This inevitably gives rise to
speculation, some of it irresponsible.


18. The most important thing to understand about Pope
Benedict's approach, Altemeyer said, is that he gives
priority to quality over quantity. His episcopal motto is
"Collaborator with the Truth," and he sees himself and the
Church as possessing the single truth, from which he will
not permit deviation. If this means there will be fewer
Catholics, so be it, so long as the ones who remain in the
Church fully accept that truth and follow the Church's
teachings and commit themselves to serving God. The Pope
doesn't have any problem with Catholics being a minority in
many places. In his view, the best way to win lapsed
Catholics back and to gain new converts is for the Church
to return to its core values. The real problem, in
Altemeyer's view, is that Brazil's 18,000 priests - one for
every 10,000 Brazilians - are increasingly overstretched
and unable to meet the often competing demands of their
routine parish functions, social and pastoral work in
favelas, hospitals, and prisons, and missionary work to win
new souls. The decline in the number of priests is endemic
in the Western Hemisphere. One solution, he said, would be
to permit volunteer married men to perform certain priestly
and missionary functions, but Altemeyer does not expect the
Church to adopt such a solution for perhaps another hundred
years, and it, and he opined that it will probably take
even longer for the Church to accept ordination of women.

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COMMENT
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19. Though the crowds who attended the Pope's public
events were smaller than organizers had hoped for, they
were nonetheless impressive, and those who were there were
generally enthusiastic. There was a "feel good" quality to
the entire visit. Much of the criticism that did take
place was predictable. For example, Leonardo Boff, an
early liberation theologian who eventually left the
priesthood after several times being disciplined by
Cardinal Ratzinger's Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, wrote that the Pope continues to insist on doing
battle with modernity, "seeing in it the arrogance of man
seeking to emancipate himself through his own strength,"

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without seeking God's help...More than anything he sees in
it secularism, materialism, and relativism." Other
Brazilians appeared not to enjoy being told how to live
their lives. However, many commentators were even-handed,
giving the Pope credit for his straight talk and stressing
that people were absolutely free to heed him or not,
according their own judgment and the dictates of their
conscience. And there is no doubt that a great many
Catholics were deeply moved by his presence and his words,
and by the fact that of all the places he might have
visited, he chose Brazil. End Comment.


20. This cable was coordinated with Embassy Brasilia.

MCMULLEN