Pope Curbed Church's Progressive Latin Wing

by Diego Cevallos

In late September, the pope increased the number of Latin American cardinals from 21 to 24, a decision that observers interpret as another step towards shoring up conservative positions in the region as his health deteriorates.

The 83-year-old pontiff suffers from Parkinson's disease and arthritis and recently has had difficulty speaking.

Nearly all of the 164 older prelates and the 31 newer ones, who beginning this month will comprise the Holy Cardinalate, adhere to the current theological line of the Vatican. Of the total, 135 are younger than 80, and therefore qualify to be named successor to the elderly John Paul II if he steps down or dies in the next six months.

According to priest Jose Oscar Beozzo, director of the Center for Evangelizing Services and Popular Education (CESEP), in Sao Paulo, the 25 years since John Paul II was elected pope have followed "a negative and obstructive route."

In Brazil "an entire generation of progressive-minded" priests has been marginalized, Beozzo, author of a history of the impacts of the various popes in Brazil, told IPS.

Karol Wojtyla, born in Poland, was elected pope on Oct. 16, 1978. Since then he has made 18 trips across the Atlantic to Latin America and the Caribbean. The first was in 1979, a tour that included Santo Domingo, Mexico and the Bahamas. The last was in 2002, when he returned to Mexico and visited Guatemala.

In these journeys he gave communion to dictators, criticized presidents, called attention to church detractors and laid out the Vatican line.

He has nearly always been warmly received by the faithful, although there were times when the crowds jeered him, as in 1983 in Nicaragua, governed by the leftist Sandinista junta, a government in which some priests participated. The Sandinistas were later ousted by the U.S.

The moment has come to found a new church "for the third millennium," said John Paul II in his early homilies, an objective that was translated as a clear shift in direction for both doctrine and hierarchy.

Of the Latin American Catholic prelates who participated in or carried forward the Second Vatican Council (1962-1966) -- seen as the basis for what became known as the progressive so- called "Liberation Theology" -- almost none remain in the top ranks of the Vatican today.

Indeed, just five of the 135 elector-cardinals were not named by the current pope.

In Brazil and Mexico, the two countries with the most Catholics and which the pope visited four and five times, respectively, only a handful of progressive-leaning bishops remain in the church scene.

Liberation Theology is based on the notion that the Gospel of Christ demands "a preferential option for the poor" and that the Catholic Church should focus its efforts on freeing people from poverty and oppression. Several Latin American priests known for their close ties to that theology came under investigation by church authorities, and some were penalized.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, director of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, presented a long declaration in 1984 challenging some of the principles of this "theology of the poor."

The most famous case was that of Brazilian priest Leonardo Boff. The Vatican imposed a penalty of "obedient silence," prompting Boff to leave the priesthood.

In Mexico, bishop Samuel Ruiz, who worked in the southern state of Chiapas, stronghold of the virtually moribund leftist Zapatista guerrillas, was also investigated for alleged deviation from church doctrine. The Catholic hierarchy also prohibited the indigenous deacons he had appointed from exercising their mandate.

"In my judgement the first apology the Catholic Church would have to make today would be to those poor defrauded people ... For being a rich church and because, when others have supported the poor, they were condemned as false prophets," Boff said in a recent interview with a Mexican daily.

Bishops recognized for their strong activities in the Brazilian church's progressive wing, like the late Helder C‡mara, were never promoted to cardinal.

And other bishops, like Ivo Lorscheiter, Luciano de Almeida and Celso Queiroz were subject to veiled recriminations, being relegated to remote dioceses in the country's interior, said Beozzo.

Several theologians, including Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveria and Clodovis Boff, Leonardo's brother, were expelled from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro for their ties to the Liberation Theology movement.

Beozzo believes that the Vatican "made a mistake by confusing Latin America with Eastern Europe," although he says the pope later changed his discourse and began to "criticize savage capitalism" and uncontrolled economic globalization.

Mexican theologian Carlos Monteverde says the pope's actions during his 1983 visit to Nicaragua, when the Sandinistas were in power, and during his stops in Chile and Argentina, where military dictatorships ruled, revealed the Vatican's doctrinaire position.

In Nicaragua, speaking before more than 700,000 people, John Paul II criticized the government that had emerged after the Sandinista National Liberation Front defeated the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship, but the pope did not say a word against the "Contras," the Washington-financed paramilitaries whose attacks on civilian targets, plus a U.S. embargo, helped overthrow the Sandinistas.

Many Nicaraguans reacted to his statements with shouts and jeers, leading the pope to abandon protocol and call repeatedly for "silence," which only further angered the crowd. The Central American country had just recently seen the end of four decades of dictatorship under the brutal and corrupt Somoza family.

Later, in Chile and Argentina, the pope had no hesitations in giving communion to the ruling military dictators, and made only tangential references to the massive killings and human rights violations committed in those countries in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1996, for the 50th wedding anniversary of by then former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), John Paul II and his right-hand man Angel Sodano sent a photo of the pope with an inscription citing Pinochet and his wife as "an exemplary Christian couple."

Instead of advancing, the Roman Catholic Church has suffered a major decline during the past quarter century because it "tried to consolidate its traditional structures without making the necessary changes," says Francisco Avendano, former director of the School of Ecumenical Sciences at the National University of Costa Rica.

"John Paul II, along with his advisers, tried to rebuild the church of the past," Avendano said in an IPS interview.

As far as Liberation Theology, he commented that the pope "neutralized it by appointing conservative bishops and priests."

According to Mexican theologian Monteverde, the positions the Vatican has taken in the past 25 years were affected by the collapse of the European communist bloc, a process in which the pope played an important role.

With the emergence of a unipolar international political scenario controlled by the United States, after the Soviet Union's demise, John Paul II began harsh criticisms of "savage capitalism." In subsequent trips to Latin America, he placed greater emphasis on economic justice and respect for human rights.

Such was the case in his 1998 visit to socialist Cuba, where he met with President Fidel Castro and other representatives of the political and economic spheres and did not take the hardline used years earlier in Nicaragua.

And more recently, he was an outspoken critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

No one can say that John Paul II did not change the Catholic Church in Latin America, leading it away from its progressive tendencies of the 1960s and early 1970s to a more conservative approach with an accent on spiritual salvation, concludes Monteverde.

It will be this "new Catholic Church" that on Oct. 16 celebrates the 25 years of the Polish Wojtyla in the papacy.

Five days later, in a special ceremony, the Vatican will formalize the elevation to cardinal of the 31 who were appointed in late September, three from Latin America, for a Cardinalate of 195.

Of that total, 135 have the authority to elect the successor to John Paul II and are themselves candidates to be the spiritual leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics around the world.