Put your feet up, this show is grand.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/070509/19/13ecb.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Wednesday May 9, 03:55 PM
<b>Rise of evangelicals on pope's agenda in Brazil</b>
Photo : AFPÂ
SAO PAOLO (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI was to embark Wednesday on the first long-haul trip of his two-year-old papacy, to the Americas, where the Roman Catholic Church is facing off against a proliferation of evangelical <b>sects</b>.
Benedict's visit to Brazil, where he will open a conference of Latin American bishops in Aparecida on Sunday, is expected to focus on <b>shrinking numbers</b> in a region that is home to nearly half of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.
Brazilian prelate Claudio Hummes, archbishop of Sao Paulo, raised the alarm about declining church numbers in October 2005, asking: <b>"How much longer will Latin America still be a Catholic continent?"</b>
In Brazil today, 64 percent of the population is Catholic compared with 74 percent 10 years ago, according to a new study published Sunday.
Meanwhile, the number of Pentecostal evangelicals has risen to 17 percent from its previous 11 percent, said the study by Datafolha based on 44,642 interviews.
<b>What is more, Latin America has a severe shortage of Catholic priests, with an average of 7,500 faithful per priest compared with the world average of 2,677, according to Vatican figures.</b>
Analysts say the 80-year-old pope, who is scheduled to touch down at Sao Paolo's Guarulhos airport at 1930 GMT Wednesday, will use his trip to Brazil to promote Christ's divinity over the politicized Jesus embraced by Latin America's liberation theologists.
Benedict is said to be convinced that the struggle for influence with evangelical sects revolves around the image of Christianity's central figure, the subject of his just-published book "Jesus of Nazareth."
However the pontiff argues that the pentecostal trend has little to do with liberation theology, the movement with Marxist overtones that swept the Latin American region, especially Brazil, in the 1970s.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, when he headed the Vatican's doctrinal enforcement body for 24 years, the pope spearheaded opposition to liberation theology, notably condemning Brazilian proponent Leonardo Boff in 1985.
Latin America has heard little from Benedict in his first two years as pope.
The pontiff has stayed close to home, apart from a trip in November to Turkey, speaking frequently of his concern over the erosion of Christian values in Europe.
By contrast, Benedict's globe-trotting predecessor John Paul II made 18 trips to Latin America and the Caribbean over his long papacy, including two in his first two years.
The Latin American bishops are expected to discuss not only the rise of evangelical sects in the region, but also poverty and exclusion and the impact of globalization.
Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said Sunday that the trip would be a chance to promote social justice in Latin America.
Bertone, the second most senior official at the Vatican, said: "Think of the violence which inflicts particularly the big cities, think of the drug trafficking that is becoming stronger and more aggressive, think of the social inequalities that cannot be bridged ... .
<b>"In all these situations the Church is present above all to enforce the message of the gospels, but also to encourage ... a revolution of equality, justice and pacification that is in the very DNA of the Church."</b>
( <!--emo&:furious--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/furious.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='furious.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR. I need but drop one name as example: Pinochet. Man, the Roman church is filled with greater liars than can be found among their islami counterparts even. http://freetruth.50webs.org/A7c.htm#Supp...tatorships - look for the section called 'Chile's Pinochet and the Vatican'. In fact the whole page is called 'The Vatican and Fascism in the 20th century'.
Evidently 'equality, justice and pacification' in catholicism mean the same as 'peace' in islam.)
In Sao Paolo, the pope will hold an "encounter with young people" at a stadium on Thursday and canonize an 18th-century Franciscan monk, Antonio de Sant'Anna Galvao, on Friday.
Galvao will be Brazil's <b>first</b> native-born saint.
(That's how long it took for that 'equality' in 'the Church's DNA' to kick in.)
On Sunday, Benedict will celebrate an open-air mass in Aparecida, a sanctuary city whose immense basilica enshrines Brazil's patron saint and is one of the most visited in the world.
Benedict's perceived neglect of Latin America has been a source of frustration for a region undergoing economic, political and religious upheavals amid a widening gap between rich and poor.
The problem is exacerbated by under-representation of the region at the Vatican, where the College of Cardinals who advise the pope counts only 31 members from Latin America out of 184, or fewer than one in five.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://au.news.yahoo.com/070509/19/13ecb.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Wednesday May 9, 03:55 PM
<b>Rise of evangelicals on pope's agenda in Brazil</b>
Photo : AFPÂ
SAO PAOLO (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI was to embark Wednesday on the first long-haul trip of his two-year-old papacy, to the Americas, where the Roman Catholic Church is facing off against a proliferation of evangelical <b>sects</b>.
Benedict's visit to Brazil, where he will open a conference of Latin American bishops in Aparecida on Sunday, is expected to focus on <b>shrinking numbers</b> in a region that is home to nearly half of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.
Brazilian prelate Claudio Hummes, archbishop of Sao Paulo, raised the alarm about declining church numbers in October 2005, asking: <b>"How much longer will Latin America still be a Catholic continent?"</b>
In Brazil today, 64 percent of the population is Catholic compared with 74 percent 10 years ago, according to a new study published Sunday.
Meanwhile, the number of Pentecostal evangelicals has risen to 17 percent from its previous 11 percent, said the study by Datafolha based on 44,642 interviews.
<b>What is more, Latin America has a severe shortage of Catholic priests, with an average of 7,500 faithful per priest compared with the world average of 2,677, according to Vatican figures.</b>
Analysts say the 80-year-old pope, who is scheduled to touch down at Sao Paolo's Guarulhos airport at 1930 GMT Wednesday, will use his trip to Brazil to promote Christ's divinity over the politicized Jesus embraced by Latin America's liberation theologists.
Benedict is said to be convinced that the struggle for influence with evangelical sects revolves around the image of Christianity's central figure, the subject of his just-published book "Jesus of Nazareth."
However the pontiff argues that the pentecostal trend has little to do with liberation theology, the movement with Marxist overtones that swept the Latin American region, especially Brazil, in the 1970s.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, when he headed the Vatican's doctrinal enforcement body for 24 years, the pope spearheaded opposition to liberation theology, notably condemning Brazilian proponent Leonardo Boff in 1985.
Latin America has heard little from Benedict in his first two years as pope.
The pontiff has stayed close to home, apart from a trip in November to Turkey, speaking frequently of his concern over the erosion of Christian values in Europe.
By contrast, Benedict's globe-trotting predecessor John Paul II made 18 trips to Latin America and the Caribbean over his long papacy, including two in his first two years.
The Latin American bishops are expected to discuss not only the rise of evangelical sects in the region, but also poverty and exclusion and the impact of globalization.
Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said Sunday that the trip would be a chance to promote social justice in Latin America.
Bertone, the second most senior official at the Vatican, said: "Think of the violence which inflicts particularly the big cities, think of the drug trafficking that is becoming stronger and more aggressive, think of the social inequalities that cannot be bridged ... .
<b>"In all these situations the Church is present above all to enforce the message of the gospels, but also to encourage ... a revolution of equality, justice and pacification that is in the very DNA of the Church."</b>
( <!--emo&:furious--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/furious.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='furious.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR. I need but drop one name as example: Pinochet. Man, the Roman church is filled with greater liars than can be found among their islami counterparts even. http://freetruth.50webs.org/A7c.htm#Supp...tatorships - look for the section called 'Chile's Pinochet and the Vatican'. In fact the whole page is called 'The Vatican and Fascism in the 20th century'.
Evidently 'equality, justice and pacification' in catholicism mean the same as 'peace' in islam.)
In Sao Paolo, the pope will hold an "encounter with young people" at a stadium on Thursday and canonize an 18th-century Franciscan monk, Antonio de Sant'Anna Galvao, on Friday.
Galvao will be Brazil's <b>first</b> native-born saint.
(That's how long it took for that 'equality' in 'the Church's DNA' to kick in.)
On Sunday, Benedict will celebrate an open-air mass in Aparecida, a sanctuary city whose immense basilica enshrines Brazil's patron saint and is one of the most visited in the world.
Benedict's perceived neglect of Latin America has been a source of frustration for a region undergoing economic, political and religious upheavals amid a widening gap between rich and poor.
The problem is exacerbated by under-representation of the region at the Vatican, where the College of Cardinals who advise the pope counts only 31 members from Latin America out of 184, or fewer than one in five.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->