IPS-English LATIN AMERICA: Catholic Church Renews 'Option for
 
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:34:47 -0700


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LATIN AMERICA: Catholic Church Renews 'Option for the Poor' 
Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jul 16  (IPS)  - The Roman Catholic Church plans to 
undertake concrete projects in the next four years to help 
overcome poverty in Latin America, the region with the most 
glaring income inequalities in the world.

”The option for the poor is one of the challenges we have in the 
region,” Monsignor Raymundo Damasceno Assis, archbishop of the 
Brazilian city of Aparecida and the new president of the Latin 
American Episcopal Council (CELAM), told IPS.

”It is above all up to Christian lay people to unite to overcome 
the structures of injustice in our countries, so that we may all 
have better living conditions,” he added at the close of the 
first CELAM General Assembly to be held in Cuba.

The latest statistics from the Economic Commission for Latin 
America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) indicate that 205 million 
people live below the poverty line in this region, of whom 79 
million are indigent (extremely poor).

Coinciding with this Assembly, which brought together 50 bishops 
from all over the region, Pope Benedict XVI authorised the 
release of the Aparecida document, approved by the bishops' 
conference held in May in the Brazilian city of the same name.

In the Aparecida document, the bishops urge every local church to 
strengthen the Social Pastorates, so that their presence might be 
felt in the midst of ”the new realities of exclusion and 
marginalisation experienced by the most vulnerable groups.”

Globalisation, the bishops say, has led to the emergence of ”new 
faces of the poor” and excluded, among whom they mention 
immigrants, victims of violence, human trafficking and 
kidnappings, displaced persons and refugees, the ”disappeared,” 
people with HIV/AIDS, those who live on city streets, miners and 
landless peasants.

”The Church's Social Pastorate must welcome and support these 
excluded people wherever they are,” the Latin American 
ecclesiastical hierarchy said in Aparecida. In the face of 
today's globalisation that favours wealth accumulation and 
promotes inequity and injustice, the Church proposes another, 
characterised by justice, solidarity and respect for human 
rights, they said.

The 136-page document, divided in three sections and 10 chapters, 
gives an overview of the regional situation and expresses 
particular concern about problems such as drug addiction and drug 
trafficking, violence which mainly targets the poorest sectors 
and raises crime indices, and the dual marginalisation 
experienced by low-income women, indigenous people and 
Afro-descendants.

The ”preferential option for the poor” is the basis of Liberation 
Theology, whose proponents' involvement in the struggles of the 
poor and marginalised sectors of the Latin American population 
often brought them into conflict with a more conservative 
Catholic Church hierarchy in the past.

Damasceno Assis said that at the Havana meeting recommendations 
were made and tasks were distributed among CELAM officials, who 
will meet again in Bogotá in August to draw up concrete projects 
to flesh out the strategy approved in Aparecida for the next four 
years. 

He also announced that the 32nd Ordinary Assembly of CELAM will 
take place in Managua in 2009.

The Jul. 10-13 meeting in Havana was hailed as historic, because 
it was held for the first time in Cuba. The bishops met with 
Cuban authorities, including vice-presidents Carlos Lage and 
Esteban Lazo, and asked them for facilities for thousands of 
young Latin Americans studying in Cuba to practice their religion 
and access spiritual help.

”They told us that this dialogue will continue, and that they are 
open to support these requests,” the archbishop of Aparecida 
said.

The Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), created in 1999, 
alone receives 1,500 students annually, on Cuban government 
scholarships, from 24 countries -- 19 within the region. Total 
student numbers are between 10,000 and 12,000 students, studying 
different years of the course.

Official sources said that at the meeting there was agreement 
about ”the need for the training given to Latin American 
professionals in Cuba to continue potentiating human values and 
the conservation of their beliefs, traditions and customs, so 
that they can return to their communities of origin and serve 
those who are most in need.”

One of ELAM's principles is to train professionals ”to a high 
level of scientific, humanist and ethical preparation and 
capacity for solidarity, so that they will be able to act within 
their environment to satisfy the needs of the region and 
contribute to sustainable human development.”

The Latin American bishops made no direct comment on at least 
three letters received from internal dissident sectors in Cuba, 
requesting that they mediate on behalf of prisoners and other 
humanitarian cases. Instead they decided to hand these matters 
over to the local Catholic Church.

”CELAM's presidency has put these matters into the hands of the 
Cuban Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is the right body to 
dialogue with the national authorities on the matters raised in 
these letters,” said a note distributed to journalists at the end 
of a press conference.

Relations between the Catholic Church and the Cuban government, 
which had been through tense times in the past, began to improve 
ever since the preparations for the visit in January 1998 of Pope 
John Paul II, who died in 2005.

Cuban curia sources have told IPS that the dialogue that was 
opened at that time has been maintained to date, although the 
situation is not idyllic, nor are all problems solved.

”There are steps still to be taken, but it cannot be said that 
(relations) are bad. Our communication with the present head of 
the Office of Religious Affairs, Caridad Diego, is fluent, and 
problems are solved in a friendly manner,” said Monsignor Carlos 
Manuel de Céspedes, vicar general of Havana, in an interview with 
Enfoques, a publication of the IPS news agency in Havana.

At the Havana meeting, CELAM also elected new officers: the first 
vice president is Baltazar Porras Cardozo, archibishop of Mérida, 
Venezuela; the second vice president is Andrés Stanovnik, bishop 
of Reconquista, Argentina. Emilio Aranguren Echeverría, bishop of 
Holguín, Cuba, is to head the Financial Committee.

Víctor Sánchez Espinosa, auxiliary bishop of Mexico, was elected 
general secretary of CELAM.

Founded in 1955, CELAM's administrative centre is in Bogotá. It 
represents the 22 episcopal conferences of Latin America and the 
Caribbean, and it re-elects its officers every four years.


***** + CELAM (http://www.celam.org/) + MEXICO: Vatican 
Incomprehension Stymies Pastoral Plan in Chiapas 
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36358) + RELIGION-SPAIN: 
Archbishop Deals Blow to 'Priests of the Poor' 
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37200) + RELIGION-COLOMBIA: 
Changing World, Changing Faiths 
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37295) + RELIGION-BRAZIL: 
Growth of Evangelical Churches Fuelled by 'Personal Touch' 
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37654)


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