Aparecida do Norte, Brazil - Pope Benedict XVI called
Saturday on Latin Americans to maintain their 'sense of belonging to
the church,' on the eve of the opening of a crucial conference of the
region's bishops in Brazil.
'In the Catholic Church we find all that is good, all that gives
grounds for security and consolation,' the pope said in Spanish, in a
speech delivered mostly in Portuguese.
The pontiff spoke before religious people, deacons and seminarians
gathered to greet him in the cathedral of Aparecida, the largest
pilgrimage site in Latin America, 160 kilometres east of Sao Paulo.
The speech was heard in the pews and outside the cathedral by some
35,000 people, many of whom had waited more than 24 hours to get a
chance to pray the rosary with Benedict.
Benedict's five-day pastoral visit to Brazil, the most populous
Roman Catholic country in the world, is set to end Sunday, after he
opens the Fifth General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America
and the Caribbean.
The gathering is expected to address the growing exodus of the
region's Roman Catholics, mainly to Pentecostal Protestant churches
that are expanding rapidly throughout Latin America.
'Anyone who accepts Christ, 'the way, the truth and the life,' in
his totality, is assured of peace and happiness, in this life and in
the next,' Benedict said. 'It is worth being faithful, it is worth
persevering in our faith.'
After praying the rosary with the enthusiastic audience, he
exhorted in Portuguese for greater efforts to evangelize.
Benedict invited Catholics 'to become profoundly missionary and to
bring the good news of the gospel to every point of the compass in
Latin America and in the world.'
In an atmosphere reminiscent of football games, he was acclaimed
by religious people who shouted his name in Portuguese - 'Bento,
Bento!' - to a tune similar to that used by fans of the popular club
Flamengo to cheer on their team.
The pope's reference to evangelization was evidence of the
Catholic Church's preoccupation with the exodus of faithful in Brazil
and across Latin America, which holds nearly half of the world's
estimated 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.
The proportion of Pentecostals in Brazil has risen from 6.6 per
cent in 1980, when the late pope John Paul II first travelled to the
country, to close to 17.3 per cent in 2003, according to a recent
estimate.
In turn, the proportion of Catholics in Brazil is thought to have
fallen from more 90 per cent to 73 per cent, with some estimates
falling as low as 64 per cent.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
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