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RELIGION-BRAZIL: Not Much of a Stir over Pope’s Visit

Mario Osava

SAO PAULO, May 9 2007 (IPS) - Pope Benedict XVI’s five-day visit to Brazil, which begins Wednesday, has not raised much of a stir, except for among the devout faithful and those who are closely involved with the Catholic Church.

“I’m Catholic, and I have a Bible that was signed by Pope John Paul II, but I don’t believe in this new pope,” taxi driver Luiz Pereira da Silva, 54, told IPS.

Da Silva, who was an altar boy when he was growing up in the small town of Formosa do Oeste in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná, said “How can I believe in a German pope, from a country which is not even Catholic and used to have a Nazi ‘religion’?”

He added that none of his taxi driver colleagues are going to the mass meetings where Pope Benedict is to meet the people. “No one I know believes in this pope,” he said.

Da Silva criticised the pontiff for forbidding the use of condoms “without offering any alternative to prevent so many people from dying of AIDS.”

In Brazil, Benedict suffers from unfavourable comparisons to his predecessor, John Paul II (1978-2005), who was the first pontiff to visit this country, home to the largest number of Roman Catholics in the world.

In 1980, the charismatic pope from Poland spent nearly a month in Brazil on a tour of the main cities and state capitals. Millions of people flocked to see him and hear his dozens of addresses. He returned twice in the 1990s, although these later visits had less of an impact than the first.

The Catholic Church will continue to lose members, because “evangelicals are more open and more welcoming. Their churches are open 24 hours a day,” whereas Catholic churches close their doors at night, said da Silva. “But I’m still a Catholic, I go to mass and read the Bible,” he added.

Preschool teacher Marta Marcondes, a nominal Catholic, said she has “zero expectations” about the pope’s visit and also senses little interest among her colleagues, neighbours and acquaintances. “It’s as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening, and their only concern is that traffic jams will probably be a nuisance,” she told IPS.

Traffic is a nightmare in the southeastern city of Sao Paulo, which has a population of 10 million, and is at the heart of a conurbation of 18 million people. Some of its avenues will be closed to traffic to ease Pope Benedict’s movements from Wednesday to Friday.

The pope will stay at the Monastery of Saint Benedict, in Old Sao Paulo. He is due to arrive late Wednesday, and will then have time only to appear on a balcony in the monastery to greet and bless people gathered in the square below.

On Thursday, Benedict will meet with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and with 35,000 young people from all over the country at the Pacaembú football stadium.

At an open-air mass on Friday in the Campo de Marte, a military airport, he will canonise Fray (Brother) Antonio Galvao, the first Brazilian saint to be recognised by the Church. One million people are expected to attend the ceremony.

After a meeting on Friday afternoon with Brazilian bishops at the Sao Paulo Cathedral, the pope will fly 170 kilometres by helicopter to Aparecida, to the National Shrine of Nossa Senhora Aparecida, an image of the Virgin Mary found in a river by poor fishermen in the 18th century that is the object of popular devotion.

On Saturday he will visit Hacienda Esperanza, a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts and AIDS sufferers run by the Catholic Church. The visit will end on Sunday, when Benedict will inaugurate the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops in Aparecida.

The pope’s visit comes at a time of friction between the Brazilian Catholic Church and the left-leaning Lula administration.

Health Minister José Gomes Temporao is in favour of a national debate on abortion, with a view to possibly holding a referendum on decriminalising abortion, a measure that has recently been adopted in Portugal and in Mexico City.

The Brazilian Catholic Church criticised the proposal, and the pope is expected to again condemn abortion, and to defend the concept of life from the moment of conception.

“There’s nothing remarkable” about the pope taking the opportunity to oppose any move towards legalising abortion in the region, at his meetings with the Brazilian government and with Latin American bishops, activist Dulce Xavier of the Catholics for a Free Choice (CCD-Br), a women’s organisation, told IPS.

In 2006, for example, Colombia extended the right to an abortion to cases where the mother’s health is put at risk – not just when her life is in danger, as in Brazil and most countries in the region, Xavier said.

In Uruguay, a draft law to decriminalise abortion was “nearly passed,” she said. It made it through the Chamber of Deputies but was narrowly voted down in the Senate.

The Church’s ban on the use of birth control “makes family planning difficult,” adds to the social burden borne by poor women, and unintentionally fosters “generalised disobedience” of the Vatican’s prohibitions, Xavier said.

A CCD-Br opinion poll carried out among 1,989 men and women between the ages of 18 to 29 found that 96 percent of Catholic interviewees were in favour of using condoms to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, and 79 percent disagreed with the Church’s ban on sexual intercourse before marriage.

The views of these young respondents reflect national trends. “This is a reality that the Church will have to wake up and listen to,” said Xavier, although she does not expect the Vatican to change its position any time soon.