The Pope makes his first Latin American tour amid challenges on all sides, says GIBBY ZOBEL |
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When Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Sao Paolo tomorrow for a four-day visit to Brazil, he will find himself on a collision course with changing Latin American society.
Brazil is a radically different country from the one Joseph Ratzinger's
predecessor, Pope John Paul II, visited in 1997.
Catholicism is in free-fall, losing ground to evangelism on one hand and to
secularism on the other. While Brazil remains the world's biggest Catholic nation - there are 155 million living here - there is turmoil over moral debates which fly in the face of the Vatican position.
There are rows over the government's highly successful anti-HIV/AIDS drive,
because it involves distributing free condoms. There are clashes at the Supreme Court over whether stem-cell research from frozen |
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| Catholicism is in free-fall in Brazil, losing ground to evangelism on the one hand and to secularism on the other |
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embryos is a violation of the constitutional right to life. And there's trouble brewing from newly empowered gay groups who are promising to stage protests and burn photos of the pontiff.
On top of all that, within weeks of Mexico City voting to legalise abortion, the Brazilian health minister has ignited a media frenzy by suggesting abortion should be more widely allowed in his own country.
No one can accuse Benedict of taking the easy option for his first papal Latin American tour, and observers will be watching to see what pressure he is prepared to put on President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - especially on the issues of frozen embryos and abortion.
Not everyone is out to shock him, however. Tens of thousands of the faithful are expected to congregate in the Pacaembu stadium for his mass rally on Thursday.
And the official CD issued to mark his visit - Benedict, Blessed is He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord - has gone gold. 
FIRST POSTED MAY 8, 2007
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