January 23, 1999
The Pope and the Poor
By JORGE G. CASTANEDA
MEXICO CITY -- In a country where according to some estimates up to 60
percent of the people are poor, and in a region with the world's most
inequitable distribution of income, Pope John Paul II's trip to Mexico
and Latin America this week will inevitably sharpen the debate on the
role of the Roman Catholic Church in combating poverty and inequality.
>From Fray Bartolom de las Casas's defense of the indigenous peoples of
New Spain in the 16th century, through the emergence of liberation
theology in the 1960's and 1970's, the Latin American coincidence of a
powerful church and widespread destitution and inequity has led to
unending acrimony.
If in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, John Paul's discourse and practice were consistent and unwavering, in Latin America his stances over the past two decades have been ambivalent. Like other foreign travelers for centuries, John Paul II has been dismayed by his encounter with sheer misery, violence and injustice: through the Caribbean and Central America, across Northeastern Brazil, in the shantytowns outside Mexico City, he was appalled by overcrowded conditions, pervasive corruption, drugs and prostitution. No sensitive visitor could react otherwise; his attacks on unfettered global capitalism and "neo-liberalism" are to some extent a consequence of his travels.
At the same time, the pope has dismantled and dispersed the scant defenders of Latin America's poor. Whatever one may think of the ideas and tactics espoused by thousands of priests and lay church workers -- all lumped together as liberation theologists -- for many years they were were a voice for the voiceless where repression was the norm. Bishops have been transferred, and seminaries shut down; appointments in Mexico, Brazil, Peru and elsewhere have tended to restore the Latin American church to what its critics said it had traditionally been: a institution of the rich, for the rich, by the rich. The dismantling of the progressive dioceses S o Paulo and many of its anti-poverty initiatives, as well as the pope's recent slashing criticism of the bishop in the Mexican state of Chiapas for his "indigenous" theology are examples of this trend.
So while John Paul II has issued scathing attacks on the widening gaps between rich and poor, town and country, and men and women, he has also helped to make any concerted effort to alleviate these ills far more difficult.
Even the one area where he could have placed himself above the left-right fray and played a lasting role in diminishing poverty and inequality fell prey to his innate ecclesiastical conservatism.
Population growth in Latin America has been dropping for two decades, but nowhere near rapidly enough to provide basic services and social rights to millions of underprivileged people. The fall in fertility rates is unevenly distributed: young women in the poorest rural areas or urban slums still have several times more children than middle-class or affluent women in residential neighborhoods. While the church under John Paul has ceased opposing family-planning efforts in most nations in the hemisphere, it has certainly not been a force for change on this crucial problem. In the 20 years he has been pope, the region's overwhelmingly Catholic population has risen from 300 million to 450 million.
While speaking up against Latin America's ancestral scourges, Pope John Paul has silenced some of the most eloquent voices of the very dispossessed he has devoted so much time to. This contradiction will be part of his legacy.
Jorge G. Castaneda teaches politics at the National University of Mexico and New York University.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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