POPE SPEAKS OUT ON FAMILY ISSUES IN FIRST BRAZIL SPEECH
SAO PAULO, Brazil, May 9 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI began his first trip to Latin America Wednesday by laying down church law on abortion, suggesting he agrees with bishops who said Catholic politicians in Mexico excommunicated themselves by legalizing abortion in that nation's capital.
Benedict, who will inaugurate an important regional bishops' conference during his trip, also spoke strongly against abortion during his first speech in Brazil. Speaking in Portuguese, he said he's certain that the bishops will reinforce "the promotion of respect for life from the moment of conception until natural death as an integral requirement of human nature."
Hundreds of faithful waiting in the cold rain for a glimpse of Benedict seemed not to care about the major challenges the
Vatican says he hopes to confront during his visit, such as the church's declining influence in Brazil, the rise of evangelism, or his in-flight comments about Mexico City's politicians.
Catholic officials have been debating for some time whether politicians who approve abortion legislation as well as doctors and nurses who take part in the procedure subject themselves to automatic excommunication under church law.
The pope was asked where he stands on the issue during the flight to Brazil, in his first full-fledged news conference since becoming pontiff in 2005.
"Do you agree with the excommunications given to legislators in Mexico City on the question?" a reporter asked.
"Yes," Benedict replied. "The excommunication was not something arbitrary. It is part of the (canon law) code. It is based simply on the principle that the killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with going in Communion with the body of Christ. Thus, they (the bishops) didn't do anything new or anything surprising. Or arbitrary."
Church officials later said the pope might have thought the Mexican bishops had issued a formal declaration of excommunication for the legislators, something Mexican Cardinal Norberto Rivera has said he has no intention of doing.
Benedict's spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope was not setting a new policy and did not intend to formally excommunicate anyone — a rare process under church law that is separate from the doctrine of self-excommunication.
"Since excommunication hasn't been declared by the Mexican bishops, the pope has no intention himself of declaring it," Lombardi said in a statement approved by the pope.
But Lombardi added that politicians who vote in favor of abortion should not receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. "Legislative action in favor of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist. ... Politicians exclude themselves from Communion," he said.
Pressed again to say whether the lawmakers were excommunicated, Lombardi reiterated: "No, they exclude themselves from Communion."
Excommunication is the severest penalty the Roman Catholic Church can impose on its members. When someone is excommunicated "his status before the church is that of a stranger," the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia says. In practical terms, that means the excommunicated person is forbidden from receiving the sacraments and participating in public worship.
Church teaching says anyone who has an abortion is automatically excommunicated. "Being a conspiring or necessary accomplice" to an abortion also means excommunication under church law.
The Mexican politicians who supported the measure shrugged off Benedict's comments Wednesday. "I'm Catholic and I'm going to continue being Catholic even if the church excommunicates me," said leftist Mexico City lawmaker Leticia Quezada. "My conscience is clean."
Before leaving Rome, Benedict said the exodus of Catholics for evangelical Protestant churches in Latin America was "our biggest worry."
But he said the spread of Protestantism shows a "thirst for God" in the region, and that he intends to lay down a strategy to answer that call when he meets with bishops from throughout Latin America in a once-a-decade meeting in the shrine city of Aparecida near Sao Paulo.
"We have to become more dynamic," he said. Evangelical churches, which the Vatican considers "sects," have attracted millions of Latin American Catholics in recent years.
The Vatican also has promised that Benedict will deliver a tough message on poverty and crime during his five-day visit to Brazil — the world's most populous Roman Catholic country.
Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, visited Mexico and addressed Latin American bishops just three months after assuming the papacy. Benedict has waited two years for his first trip to a region with nearly half the world's 1.1 billion Catholics. But he denied being "Eurocentric" or less concerned about poverty in the developing world than his predecessors.
"I love Latin America. I have traveled there a lot," he told reporters, adding that he is happy the time had come for the trip after focusing on more urgent problems in the Middle East and Africa.
Benedict, who visited Brazil as then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1990, will celebrate several open-air Masses, including a canonization ceremony for Brazil's first native-born saint, and visit a church-run drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.
Marcelo Zapata, 19, flew from Chile in hopes of glimpsing the pontiff. "The pope is the representative of Christ on Earth and I'm emotional about meeting him," he said. "I never met any other pope and this may be the only time he'll come to Latin America because he's already 80 years old."
Ivany Yazbek, 49, managed to touch the hand of John Paul II when he visited Brazil in 1980. "I don't know if this pope will be as charismatic as the other pope, but we'll find out," Yazbek said.
Shivering in the cold, Edmundo Barbosa, a 32-year-old salesman, said, "I just want to see what he looks like, and if I could talk to him I'd ask for peace."
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Pope speaks out on family issues
as he arrives in Brazil
by Gina Doggett
SAO PAULO (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI spoke out on family issues, notably against abortion, as he arrived Wednesday in Sao Paulo for the first leg of a key visit to Brazil and a meeting with Latin American bishops.
"All Latin America safeguards values that are radically Christian," he said at a welcoming ceremony at Sao Paulo's airport, flanked by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
At a bishops conference that Benedict will inaugurate in nearby Aparecida on Sunday, Benedict said, "This identity will be reinforced through the promotion of respect for life from the moment of conception until natural death as an integral requirement of human nature."
The 80-year-old pontiff added: "The Church seeks only to stress the moral values present in each situation and to form the conscience of the citizens so that they may make informed and free decisions.
"She will not fail to insist on the need to take action to ensure that the family, the basic cell of society, is strengthened."
The remarks come just two weeks after the Roman Catholic Church lost a key social battle when Mexico City, an important Catholic bastion, decriminalized abortion.
During a news conference on the papal plane en route to Brazil, Benedict backed a threat by Mexican bishops to ex-communicate lawmakers who voted for the bill.
"It is written in the (canon) law that murdering a child is incompatible with communion, and the bishops have done nothing arbitrary. They have only put the spotlight on what is allowed by Church law."
Mexico City is one of the few places in Latin America where abortion is allowed without restrictions in the first three months of pregnancy. Cuba, Guyana and Puerto Rico, a US territory, have similar legislation.
High on the agenda for the bishops conference will be discussions of the surge in pentecostal sects in the Latin American region.
"We should be more missionary, or more dynamic, to offer responses to the thirst for God," said Benedict during the on-board news conference.
The bishops' conference "wants to find a convincing response to this problem and is working on it already," said Benedict.
South America is home to nearly half of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics. But in Brazil, while 64 percent of the population is Catholic, the figure has fallen from 74 percent a decade ago, according to a recent study.
Meanwhile the number of Pentecostal evangelicals has risen to 17 percent from 11 percent, said the Datafolha study based on 44,642 interviews.
Tight security under "Operation Archangel" has marshalled some 10,000 military, police and civilians under army command to protect the pontiff during his movements, which are to include helicopter hops and brief outings in the Popemobile.
In teeming Sao Paulo, Benedict is to celebrate an open-air mass on Friday at the vast Campo de Marte where a giant wooden cross has been erected for the occasion. On Thursday the pope will have an "encounter with youth" in the city's Pacaembu stadium.
Public transport has been stepped up, and helicopter travel -- a popular way for the well-heeled to escape Sao Paulo's notorious traffic jams -- will be restricted.
In Friday's mass, where up to a million faithful are expected, Benedict will canonize Brother Galvao, Brazil's first native-born saint.
The friar, who lived from 1739 to 1822, founded monasteries and convents throughout Brazil but is best known today because of his reputed healing powers.
Aparecida is a heavily visited sanctuary city dedicated to the cult of Our Lady of the Apparition, the patron saint of Brazil, enshrined in a massive basilica.
There the pope will kick off the two-week conference of 166 bishops and cardinals from the 22 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, the group's first meeting in 15 years, on Sunday.
Analysts say the pope will also 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 head of the Roman Catholic Church 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.
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Pope takes anti-abortion message
to Latin America
By Philip Pullella
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Pope Benedict arrived in Brazil on Wednesday, his first visit to Latin America, on a mission to reaffirm traditional family values and stem the exodus of Roman Catholics to other faiths.
The Church "will not fail to insist on the need to take action to ensure that the family, the basic cell of society, is strengthened," the 80-year-old Pope said in a speech after arriving at Sao Paulo's rain-soaked international airport.
He reiterated his firm opposition to abortion -- just as Brazil's health minister and churchmen waged a war of words over the issue.
"I am well aware that the soul of this people, as of all Latin America, safeguards values that are radically Christian," the Pope said in Portuguese after he was greeted by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
"This identity will be reinforced through the promotion of respect for life from the moment of conception until natural death as an integral requirement of human nature," he said.
Brazil has the world's largest Catholic population, with about 125 million faithful. But the Pope's five-day trip is overshadowed by concerns that the Catholic Church is losing its grip here and elsewhere in Latin America.
Millions of Latin Americans -- home to nearly half the world's 1.1 billion Catholics -- have left the Catholic fold to Protestant branches such as Pentecostalism.
The Church's opposition to contraception, abortion rights and sex outside marriage has also generated growing doubts among followers in Brazil and across Latin America. It has also caused friction with some governments.
Pope Benedict said he would raise the defections issue at a conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops in the town of Aparecida, where he will deliver the keynote address.
"This is our common worry. We need to find a convincing response," he told reporters.
He also said Catholic politicians who support abortion should be excommunicated. He had been asked if he supported a threat by Mexican church leaders to excommunicate leftist lawmakers who last month voted to legalize abortion in Mexico City.
Just before the visit, Lula and his health minister appeared to take issue with the Church's stance on abortion.
Lula said the matter should be treated as a health concern because many Brazilian women die from clandestine abortions.
Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao, who wants a national plebiscite to legalize abortion, accused Church groups of stifling debate.
That prompted a harsh response from Geraldo Majella, head of Brazil's national bishops' council, who accused the government of promoting promiscuity.
Temporao fired back on Wednesday, saying he was not worried by the Pope's excommunication threat. He said he wanted women to join in the abortion debate because although men made the laws it was women who were suffering.
"Unfortunately, men don't get pregnant. If they did, this question would already be resolved," Temporao said.
Many priests are also waiting for guidance on social action in a continent marked by poverty and deprivation.
Pope Benedict promised in his speech to give priority to the poor, the young and to indigenous peoples. He said earlier that Latin American clergy rightly need to address social justice issues, but should stay out of politics.
The Pope is well known in Latin America for the crackdown he led as then-
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger against the Liberation Theology movement in the 1970s and 1980s, when leftist priests worked with the poor and against military dictatorships.
He has a reputation as a conservative theologian and lacks the charisma of his popular predecessor, Pope John Paul.
More than 1 million people are expected at an outdoor mass on Friday in Sao Paulo, where he will canonize the 18th-century Friar Antonio Galvao, the first Brazilian-born saint.
(Additional reporting by Terry Wade, writing by Angus MacSwan; editing by Kieran Murray; Sao Paulo newsroom +55-11-5644-7714))
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/05/2007 23.39]