Aparecida, Brazil
In his first visit to Latin America, Pope Benedict XVI this week called for a return to conservative values as a way to stem the church’s decline in the region. Over the last two decades, the Catholic Church has been steadily losing members to Pentecostalism and other Protestant movements. In a major address to bishops, Benedict denounced abortion and contraception and called both Marxism and capitalism “systems that marginalize God.” Benedict also criticized liberation theology, the Latin American strain of Catholicism that advocates political action on behalf of the poor. On his five–day trip, Benedict canonized the first Brazilian saint, an 18th–century monk named Friar Galvao. Galvao can be a role model for “an age so full of hedonism,” said Benedict.
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