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                               VIS-Press releases

POPE INAUGURATES CONFERENCE OF LATIN AMERICAN EPISCOPATE

VATICAN CITY, MAY 13, 2007 (VIS) - This afternoon in the conference hall of the
shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, the Holy Father presided at the inaugural
session of the Fifth General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and
the Caribbean. The conference is due to last until May 31 and has as its theme:
"Disciples and missionaries in Jesus Christ, that in Him our peoples may have
life ('I am the Way and the Truth and the Life')"

The event - which took place during the celebration of Vespers on this sixth
Sunday of Easter - began with greetings from Cardinal Francisco Javier
Errazuriz Ossa, archbishop of Santiago de Chile and president of the Latin
American Episcopal Council (CELAM).

The Holy Father began his talk by giving thanks to God for "the great gift of
the Christian faith to the peoples of this continent."

"Faith in God," he said, "has animated the life and culture of these nations
for more than five centuries. ... Yet what did the acceptance of the Christian
faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it
meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were
seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is
the Savior for Whom they were silently longing."

"In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of His Gospel did not at any point
involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition
of a foreign culture. Authentic cultures are not closed in upon themselves, nor
are they set in stone at a particular point in history, ... they are seeking an
encounter with other cultures, hoping to reach universality through encounter
and dialogue with other ways of life and with elements that can lead to a new
synthesis, in which the diversity of expressions is always respected as well as
the diversity of their particular cultural embodiment."

"The wisdom of the indigenous peoples fortunately led them to form a synthesis
between their cultures and the Christian faith which the missionaries were
offering them. Hence the rich and profound popular religiosity, in which we see
the soul of the Latin American peoples."

Benedict XVI then considered the question of globalization saying that,
although "from certain points of view this benefits the great family of
humanity, ... it also undoubtedly brings with it the risk of vast monopolies
and of treating profit as the supreme value."

"In Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in other regions, there has
been notable progress towards democracy, although there are grounds for concern
in the face of authoritarian forms of government and regimes wedded to certain
ideologies that we thought had been superseded, and which do not correspond to
the Christian vision of man and society as taught by the Social Doctrine of the
Church. On the other side of the coin, the liberal economy of some Latin
American countries must take account of equity, because of the ever increasing
sectors of society that find themselves oppressed by immense poverty or even
despoiled of their own natural resources."

The Pope noted the "notable degree of maturity in faith" among many lay people
and catechists. "Yet it is true," he added, "that one can detect a certain
weakening of Christian life in society overall and of participation in the life
of the Catholic Church, due to secularism, hedonism, indifference and
proselytism by numerous sects, animist religions and new pseudo-religious
phenomena. ... The faithful are looking to this fifth conference for ... new
paths and creative pastoral plans, ... capable of instilling a firm hope for
living out the faith joyfully and responsibly, and thus spreading it in one's
own surroundings."

"In the face of the priority of faith in Christ and of life 'in Him' - as
formulated in the title of this fifth conference - a further question could
arise: could this priority not perhaps be a flight towards emotionalism,
towards religious individualism, an abandonment of the urgent reality of the
great economic, social and political problems of Latin America and the world,
and a flight from reality towards a spiritual world?"

"The first basic point to affirm," the Holy Father continued, "is the
following: only those who recognize God know reality and are able to respond to
it adequately and in a truly human manner. The truth of this thesis becomes
evident in the face of the collapse of all the systems that marginalize God."

At the beginning of this new phase for the Church in Latin America and the
Caribbean, starting with this fifth general conference in Aparecida, "an
indispensable pre-condition is profound knowledge of the Word of God. To
achieve this, we must train people to read and meditate on the Word of God
through catechesis using the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its abridged
version, the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

"In this area," the Pope added, "we must not limit ourselves solely to
homilies, lectures, Bible courses or theology courses, but we must have
recourse also to the communications media: press, radio and television,
websites, forums and many other methods for effectively communicating the
message of Christ to a large number of people."

There will also be need, he went on, for "social catechesis and a sufficient
formation in the social teaching of the Church, for which a very useful tool is
the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Christian life is not
expressed solely in personal virtues, but also in social and political
virtues."

"The peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean have the right to a full life,
proper to the children of God, under conditions that are more human: free from
the threat of hunger and from every form of violence." In this context,
Benedict XVI recalled Paul VI's Encyclical "Populorum Progressio," which was
promulgated 40 years ago this year and which emphasizes that "authentic
development must be integral, that is, directed to the promotion of the whole
person and of all people, and it invites all to overcome grave social
inequalities and the enormous differences in access to goods."

"In order to form disciples and sustain missionaries in their great task, the
Church offers them in addition to the bread of the Word, the bread of the
Eucharist. ... Hence the need to give priority in pastoral programs to
appreciation of the importance of Sunday Mass" which "must be the center of
Christian life."

"Christians should be aware that they are not following a character from past
history, but the living Christ, present in the 'today' and the 'now' of their
lives. ... The encounter with Christ in the Eucharist calls forth a commitment
to evangelization and an impulse towards solidarity; it awakens in the
Christian a strong desire to proclaim the Gospel and to bear witness to it in
the world so as to build a more just and humane society. ... Only from the
Eucharist will the civilization of love spring forth which will transform Latin
America and the Caribbean, making them not only the continent of hope, but also
the continent of love!"

"How," the Pope went on to ask, "can the Church contribute to the solution of
urgent social and political problems, and respond to the great challenge of
poverty and destitution? ... In this context, we inevitably speak of the
problem of structures, especially those which create injustice.

"In truth," he added, "just structures are a condition without which a just
order in society is not possible. But how do they arise? How do they function?
Both capitalism and Marxism promised to point out the path for the creation of
just structures, and they declared that these, once established, would function
by themselves; ... that not only would they have no need of any prior
individual morality, but that they would promote a communal morality.

"And this ideological promise has been proved false. The facts have clearly
demonstrated it. The Marxist system, where it found its way into government,
not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a
painful destruction of the human spirit. And we can also see the same thing
happening in the West, where the distance between rich and poor is growing
constantly, and giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity
through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness.

"Just structures," the Holy Father explained, "neither arise nor function
without a moral consensus in society on fundamental values, and on the need to
live these values with the necessary sacrifices, even if this goes against
personal interest. Where God is absent - God with the human face of Jesus
Christ - these values fail to show themselves with their full force, nor does a
consensus arise concerning them.

"I do not mean that non-believers cannot live a lofty and exemplary morality; I
am only saying that a society in which God is absent will not find the
necessary consensus on moral values or the strength to live according to the
model of these values, even when they are in conflict with private interests.

"On the other hand, just structures must be sought and elaborated in the light
of fundamental values, with the full engagement of political, economic and
social reasoning. ... This political task is not the immediate competence of
the Church," because "respect for a healthy secularity - including the
pluralism of political opinions - is essential in the authentic Christian
tradition.

"If the Church were to start transforming herself into a directly political
subject, she would do less, not more, for the poor and for justice, because she
would lose her independence and her moral authority, identifying herself with a
single political path and with debatable partisan positions. ... Only by
remaining independent can she teach the great criteria and inalienable values,
guide consciences and offer a life choice that goes beyond the political
sphere."

The Holy Father expressed the view that, Latin America "being a continent of
baptized Christians, it is time to overcome the notable absence - in the
political sphere, in the world of the media and in the universities - of the
voices and initiatives of Catholic leaders," and "to remind the laity of their
responsibility and their mission to bring the light of the Gospel into public
life, into culture, economics and politics."

The Pope then considered other priority areas for the renewal of the Church in
Latin America, beginning with the family which is a "patrimony of humanity and
constitutes one of the most important treasures of Latin American countries."
However, "it is currently suffering a degree of adversity caused by secularism
and by ethical relativism, by movements of population internally and
externally, by poverty, by social instability and by civil legislation opposed
to marriage."

"In some families in Latin America there still unfortunately persists a
chauvinist mentality that ignores the 'newness' of Christianity, in which the
equal dignity and responsibility of women relative to men is acknowledged and
affirmed."

"Consequently there has to be intense and vigorous pastoral care of families.
Moreover, it is indispensable to promote authentic family policies
corresponding to the rights of the family as an essential subject in society."

The Holy Father then encouraged priests "to accomplish their exalted calling,"
to which end they must possess "a solid spiritual formation" and a life "imbued
with faith, hope and charity." At the same time they "must be attentive to
their cultural and intellectual preparation."

"Latin American and Caribbean society needs your witness," he told religious
men and women and consecrated persons. "In a world that so often gives priority
to seeking well-being, wealth and pleasure as the goal of life, ... you are
witnesses that there is another meaningful way to live."

"I remind the lay faithful," he said, "that they too are the Church, the
assembly called together by Christ so as to bring His witness to the whole
world," and that "they must consider themselves jointly responsible for
building society according to the criteria of the Gospel, with enthusiasm and
boldness, in communion with their pastors."

Pope Benedict noted the fact that "in Latin America the majority of the
population is made up of young people. ... Young people are not afraid of
sacrifice, but of a meaningless life. ... They must also commit themselves to a
constant renewal of the world in the light of God. More still, they must oppose
the facile illusions of instant happiness and the deceptive paradise offered by
drugs, pleasure, and alcohol; and they must oppose every form of violence."

"The deliberations of this fifth general conference lead us to make the plea of
the disciples on the road to Emmaus our own: 'Stay with us, for it is towards
evening, and the day is now far spent'," said the Pope as he reached the
conclusion of his address.

"Stay with us, because ... discouragement is eating its way into our hearts:
make them burn with the certainty of Easter. ... Stay with us, Lord, when mists
of doubt, weariness or difficulty rise up around our Catholic faith."

"You are Life itself: remain in our homes, so that they may continue to be
nests where human life is generously born, where life is welcomed, loved and
respected from conception to natural death.

"Remain, Lord, with those in our societies who are most vulnerable; remain with
the poor and the lowly, with indigenous peoples and Afro-Americans, who have
not always found space and support to express the richness of their culture and
the wisdom of their identity. Remain, Lord, with our children and with our
young people, who are the hope and the treasure of our continent. ... O Good
Shepherd, remain with our elderly and with our sick. Strengthen them all in
faith, so that they may be Your disciples and missionaries!"
PV-BRAZIL/CELAM CONFERENCE/APARECIDAVIS 070514 (2330)

SUMMARY

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