Global Post: SAO PAOLO, Brazil — When Pope Francis makes his first scheduled overseas trip to the world’s most Catholic continent, he will be guaranteed an ecstatic welcome.
By happy coincidence, this year’s World Youth Day is being held in Rio de Janeiro in July and with papal attendance confirmed, Latin Americans will have an early chance to see the first pope who is one of their own. Around 40 percent of the world’s Catholics live in the region, with Brazil being the world’s most populous Catholic country – 64.6 percent of its 191 million citizens say they are faithful to Rome.
But if Francis wants to see firsthand the challenges the Vatican faces in the region, he should visit Rio’s notoriously violent slums. Here the youth are restless and evangelical church halls run by homegrown Protestant pastors appear on every second block, a pattern repeated on the poor periphery of most Brazilian cities.
As if following Europe, where the Catholic Church is besieged by secularism and apathy, most middle class Latin Catholics no longer pay attention to the church’s teachings on contraception and divorce while left-leaning governments increasingly legalize same-sex marriages and chip away and the region’s draconian anti-abortion laws. Many young Brazilians are turning away from the church and nearly 10 percent now say they follow no organized religion.
Categories: Americas
One of my maids comes from a Catholic Sri Lankan background and is now attending the Pentecostal Evangelical Church. So it seems the ‘move away from the Catholic Church’ does not only take place in South America.