Amid Burst of Fervor, Pope Canonizes a Brazilian

Amid Burst of Fervor, Pope Canonizes a Brazilian [Excerpts]

SÃO PAULO, Brazil, May 11 - After canonizing Brazil's first native-born saint [St. Sebastian] and receiving a bracing dose of Brazilian-style religious fervor at an outdoor Mass, Pope Benedict XVI called Friday for more forceful evangelization throughout Latin America to counter growing conversions to Pentecostal Protestant groups.

"No effort should be spared in seeking out those Catholics who have fallen away and those who know little or nothing of Jesus Christ," he told Brazilian bishops at Catedral da Sé de São Paulo. "What is required, in a word, is a mission of evangelization capable of engaging all the vital energies in this immense flock."

About 140 million Brazilians regard themselves as Catholics, the largest Roman Catholic population in the world. But many do not attend Mass regularly, and the portion who identify themselves as Roman Catholic has dropped in less than a generation from nearly 90 percent of the population to about two-thirds, because of the Protestant advance.

The pope made his appeal in his characteristic way: He emphasized competing with the Pentecostal denominations first by meeting people's spiritual needs with a back-to-basics Catholicism centered on preaching Jesus' message. He did not stint on providing for people's social and material needs, but suggested, as he has in the past, that the spiritual dimension was more important and was the true work of the church.

Daily life in Brazil is permeated by the presence of saints, from the names of neighborhoods, businesses and cities, to the plaster statues found in corner bars and the posters and paintings hung in homes both humble and grand.

Fast-growing Pentecostal groups, however, strongly disapprove of the popular focus on saints, which they regard as a form of idolatry forbidden by the Bible. In the 1990s, one Pentecostal preacher prominent on television even smashed an image of the Virgin Mary during one of his programs, shocking many Brazilians and generating widespread repudiation.

"We Brazilians love to venerate the saints, like St. Anthony and St. George, but until now they've all been foreigners," said Bernardo Leite Alves, a 39-year-old bus driver who said he often drove with an image of St. Sebastian on his windshield. As for Friar Galvão, he said, "This is a saint who is really truly ours, born and bred here, who looks like us and has a name like ours."

(Rohter & Fisher, New York Times, May 12, 2007)

[TBC: The Pope says that "No effort should be spared in seeking out those Catholics who have fallen away and those who know little or nothing of Jesus Christ..." It is ironic that he speaks of those who know little or nothing of Jesus Christ when the emphasis of the rest of the article is on venerating the saints. It is back-to-basics Catholicism based upon tradition over the Bible which is responsible for the melding of animism and the teachings of Rome.]