TOP STORY: A PAPAL TRIP: Pope hopes to fortify church in Central America pilgrimage

c. 1996 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY (RNS)-At the time of Pope John Paul II’s 1983 pilgrimage to Central America, the governments of Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador were more likely to spurn democratic principles than embrace them. As the pope prepares to return for the first time in 13 years, all three countries have […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY (RNS)-At the time of Pope John Paul II’s 1983 pilgrimage to Central America, the governments of Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador were more likely to spurn democratic principles than embrace them.

As the pope prepares to return for the first time in 13 years, all three countries have democratically elected governments.”A new climate is gradually emerging,”the pope said recently, one that is”more attentive to the aspirations and real needs of the people.” But the transformation from war to peace is hardly complete, as the pope will surely see during his seven-day visit, beginning Monday (Feb. 5), that will also take him to Venezuela.


Guatemala’s 35-year civil war shows no signs of ending, though some progress has been made in peace talks. In Nicaragua, the Catholic Church has been the target of bomb attacks in the run-up to the country’s elections, scheduled for October. And in El Salvador, religious persecution of Catholic clergy continues.

Venezuela, which John Paul last visited in 1985, was included in the trip so the pope could take part in celebrations marking 500 years of Christianity.

The Latin America visit is tightly scheduled and may test the strength and stamina of the 75-year-old pope, who has been struck by numerous illness and injuries in recent years. The pontiff appears to have recovered from a fall in 1994 in which he broke his thigh bone, but his pace has slowed since then.

While the Vatican says the entire visit is solely pastoral-the chief religious event is a papal celebration of the 400th anniversary of Guatemala’s Holy Christ of Esquipulas shrine-the geopolitical implications of the trip are inescapable.”He is going to compliment the peace process to try to make further improvements in their way of life,”said the Rev. Randy Soto, a Costa Rican in Rome who has closely followed the political situation in Latin America and who was involved in the Central American peace talks of the 1980s.

The pope is widely expected to call for further efforts to promote human rights and social justice. He will likely urge the governments of all three countries to make economic improvements and reduce unemployment, especially in Nicaragua, where the jobless rate is 60 percent.

He also will encourage reconciliation among warring factions, particularly in Guatemala, where the United Nations-sponsored peace process between the government and Indian guerrillas is at a virtual standstill. A formal truce has expired, though few expect hostilities during the pope’s visit.

The civil war has pitted Guatemala’s minority indigenous Indian population against the government over land distribution, economic reforms and social-justice issues.”Today’s dialogue between the parties concerned is presented as the necessary way to reconcile the various political projects with ethical principles, and thus attain the longed-for peace,”the pope recently told Guatemala’s new ambassador to the Holy See, Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Wever.


Nonetheless, Central America’s landscape of fledgling democracies is far more promising to the church than the old Cold War divisions that fostered military juntas, death squads and dictators.

Nowhere was this division more stark than in Nicaragua, where, at an outdoor Mass in 1983, the pope implicitly criticized the communist-backed Sandinista government for ideological extremism. The remarks were met by a chorus of boos and chants trumpeting the revolution from a well-organized army of youths at the site, which was festooned with pictures of Marx and Lenin. Clearly frustrated, the pope thundered,”Silence!” Nicaragua’s democratically elected government of President Violeta Chamorro has promised that the upcoming papal visit will come off without a hitch.

For their part, the Sandinistas deny that they or their supporters are responsible for some 18 bomb attacks on Catholic churches since May.

More than a dozen people have been arrested in connection with the bombings. Police say some of the suspects have ties to the Sandinista Front, though they acknowledge that the attacks did not appear to be orchestrated by the Sandinistas.”Chamorro’s government is, of course, anxious that everything goes well because it’s sort of an apology to the Holy Father for the last visit,”said the Rev. Robert Lafevbre, of the Maryknoll foreign missionary society, which is active in Latin America.

What’s more, Lafevbre said he expects that the pope”will try to reinforce the government of Chamorro”by lauding improvements under her stewardship.

In addition to the routine assaults against the church and against Catholic clergy, as in El Salvador, the church faces several other considerable challenges in Latin America. A shortage of priests threatens to undermine attempts to fortify the church. The ever burgeoning appeal of the evangelical movement, which has found its most fertile ground in Guatemala, also poses serious long-term challenges to Rome.


In El Salvador, the church has not fully recovered from the murders in 1989 by government soldiers of six Jesuit priests. Persecution of religious clergy continues. Occasionally the mere threat of persecution is used as a way to air grievances, as in a recent case involving laborers who occupied several Catholic churches to push their case for higher wages.

But El Salvador has shown considerable economic and democratic progress, Vatican officials say. They point to the transformation of the Catholic liberation theology movement, which angered Rome by mixing Marxism, Catholicism and armed resistance to promote the rights of workers and stand up to totalitarian governments.

Now, the pope appears satisfied that liberation theology as most widely practiced has become benign, shedding the extreme elements and promoting human rights.

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One of the most vexing and long-term tests of the church’s authority is the unabated growth in the evangelical movement.

The Vatican estimates that by the year 2000, half of Guatemala’s population will have abandoned the Roman Catholic Church for the interdenominational Protestant movement of evangelicals. The movement, imported from the United States, has become ever more popular with the impending third Christian millennium and controversial interpretations of Scripture regarding the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

The church is clearly anxious about the growing appeal of evangelicals, whose emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus is contrary to the hierarchical structure of Roman Catholicism.”In the last few decades, (Catholic) missionary expansion has failed to keep pace with demographic growth and is being challenged, especially in Latin America, by the disintegrating work of sects,”the pontiff told a Vatican commission on priests in mid-January.”How does he deal with this?”Lafevbre said.”Namely, by strengthening the faith of the people. It’s one of his most important challenges.” He added,”If the people lose the faith in Latin America, that is one big tragedy for the church because the continent is clearly a major priority for the church.”


MJP END HEILBRONNER

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