In a video released October 11, the archbishop said the party’s actions on behalf of its presidential candidate and former Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff, are aimed at “deceiving voters” into believing that she does not favor any legalization of abortion in the country.

Despite assurances from Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the party is clearly committed to promoting “the culture of death in our country” Archbishop Pagotto said.

Abortion is currently illegal in Brazil except in cases of rape or when the life of the mother is at risk.

In the current campaign, Rousseff has cited her Catholic upbringing and described herself as pro-life. However, in an Internet video produced in 2007, she is shown arguing that, “Today in Brazil, it is absurd that abortion has not yet been legalized’.”

The archbishop charged that since the 1990s the Workers’ Party has been in league with international organizations that have financed the expansion of contraception and abortion in Brazil.

“Ever since it rose to power, the Workers’ Party agenda has been the complete legalization of abortion in Brazil,” he said.

Archbishop Pagotto recalled that the Lula administration had argued for United Nations recognition of abortion as a “human right” in 2005. At the same time, the archbishop noted, Lula wrote to the Brazilian bishops and assured them, “by the faith he received from his mother” that he had no “intention of legalizing abortion in the country.”

Shortly after that letter, Lula sent a bill to the National Congress that would have legalized abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy.

In addition, the archbishop noted, the Lula administration has advanced the so-called “Brazilian Consensus,” which recommends that abortion be legalized in Brazil and throughout Latin America.

These acts, the archbishop said, refute the assurances of Rousseff and Lula in the current campaign.

“As pastor I cannot settle for this kind of misinformation and manipulation of consciences,” the archbishop stated. “When democracy becomes this type of demagoguery in order to win votes, a dictatorship is on the horizon.”

Mercopress

Ricardo Brajterman, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said that the photograph "hurt the feelings of believers". According to Brajterman, the decision also ordered the magazine to refrain from using religious elements in future articles that include nudes. In February, Brajterman also obtained a court order prohibiting a parade float with allegorical references to the Holocaust from entering Rio's Carnaval.

The magazine continues being sold freely in Brazilian news stands three days after the court decision. The erotic essay is one of the most daring by the Brazilian version of the publication ever, including rare shots of frontal nudity.

Playboy Brazil says it has not yet been notified of Freixinho's ruling. If the magazine fails to follow the judge's order after being notified, it could be ordered to pay as much as 1,000 reais (US$ 617) per day in
fines.

Castro is a novela (soap opera) star of Globo network, Brazil's audience leader TV. Edson Aran, editor of Playboy Brazil called the polemic "a tempest on a teacup."

Talking to Dia FM, a Rio radio station, the actress called herself a good catholic and denied that she had any intention to shock, stir a scandal or challenge de Catholic church. She called the pictures artistic and in good taste. As for the rosary, she explained, it was just an allusion to a character in Dona Flor and Her Two Husband by Jorge Amado whom she is playing on the stage right now.

A spokesperson for the São Paulo archdiocese, Juarez de Castro, however, disagreed. For him, the picture is a flagrant disrespect "not only to the Catholic church, but also to the people's faith. It's fashionable to say that these pictures are a photo essay, but in truth they are not more than vulgar eroticism."

Ask now any Liberation Theology representative, and Ratzinger’s jovial visit turns into a clear message in which friar Galvão is a mere popular supporting actor in a plan to contain the Catholic exodus; and the bishops conference becomes the main stage to attack those who live under the prism of "preferential option for the poor" –  an option by the way germinated in Medellin (Colombia), in 1968, during the encounter’s 2nd edition and irrigated in the following meeting in Puebla (Mexico), in 1979.

Benedict XVI did not choose Brazil by chance for his first trip as a pope to the American continent. His stay, although short, can define the Church’s course in Latin America for the next ten years. This because traditionally the inaugural talk of the General Conference of the Latin-American and Caribbean Episcopate (CELAM), which will be delivered by Ratzinger the same day he leaves the country, May 13,   serves to delimit the discussions ground, which this time will be conducted by 280 bishops who will remain gathered in the city of Aparecida do Norte up to May 31.

And it’s precisely here that Ratzinger’s concerns play a role. He will be treading Brazilian territory for the third time. The first one was in 1985, soon after the proceedings against Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff and the second, in 1990, to teach a course to Brazilian bishops in  Rio de Janeiro.

Almost half of the planet’s Catholics live in Latin America. They are 480 million faithfuls who little by little are abandoning the Catholic Church. Ratzinger is hopeful that his talk has direct influence on the lines of pastoral action adopted by the bishops at the end of the meeting.

As a curiosity in this battle between the Catholic Church and the neopentecostal churches we need only say that the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, belonging to bishop Edir Macedo, has just announced that his pastors will be handing out condoms to all their faithfuls, as a follow-up to what they are already doing in South Africa.

Appetizer

This line of reasoning supports in part the opinion of Father João Pedro Baresi, a Combonian priest aligned to the Liberation Theology. Says he, "Ratzinger’s visit is part of a plan in which the biggest concern is the exodus of the Catholic believers." Not only that.

For Baresi, the pope is also going to use the trip to try "to put a brake on Liberation Theology," since Ratzinger blames the Liberation Theology for the increasing loss of believers since its affirmation as theology in the decade of 1960.

"What the just-installed São Paulo archbishop, Odilo Scherer, said a few days ago, that the time of that theology has passed may just be an appetizer of things to come." That’s what Baresi believes.

And in this context, the inaugural talk of the CELAM Conference is extremely important for the pope to convey his message. "Friar Galvão’s canonization complements the plan: it is the Catholic popular religiosity being used to try to hold the people in exodus."

Still commenting on bishop Odilo, Baresi adds:"He should substantiate his statement. And another thing, what matters is not the Liberation Theology, but the liberation itself, as Gustavo Gutierrez always says. If anyone has something better that contributes to the commitment of liberation in the light of faith, he should propose it".

But Scherer’s statement is not the only clue left by the current pope on his way to Latin America. The Vatican’s recent warning to the Jesuit aligned to the Liberation Theology, Jon Sobrino, who lives in El Salvador, sounds like a new condemnation by Ratzinger of this Gospel’s interpretation key.

Liberation Theology Lives

Brazilian Benedictine monk Marcelo Barros subscribes to the idea that Liberation Theology would only be obsolete if the conditions and motives that originated it didn’t exist any longer. "Now, we all know that on the contrary, unjust poverty and social inequality increased a lot, as well as it can be said that the resurgence of indigenous and peasant popular movements is more organized. All over the planet the number of those who are getting organized in order to make a different world possible is also increasing.

"As many of these people are protestants, Christian or from other religions, not only the Liberation Theology remains valid, but it also stopped being just a Latin-American phenomenon to become global."

Barros, who belongs to the  Theological Commission of the Ecumenical Association of the Third World Theologians, says that he has seen a bridge-building movement between Liberation Theology and the Cultural and Religious Pluralism Theology.

"That means that there is today an inter-religious Liberation Theology, which is not only Christian. With a wide literature that didn’t exist before and that includes Black Theology, Indigenous Theology, Feminist Theology, Eco-Theology, which have become new branches of Liberation Theology."

The Dominican Friar Betto was also contacted for this story. His adviser told us, however, that he was in Cuba and that he wouldn’t be able to answer since he has a hard time using the Internet because of the United States blockade of the island.

This article appeared originally in the magazine Brasil de Fato  – www.brasildefato.com.br.

In the administration’s  federal, state and municipal tiers, all we can find is perplexity. Brazil’s structure has been dismantled, in other words, there isn’t a single structure capable of presenting itself as being ready for an effective exercise of power. This is the worst drama, the antechamber of total disaggregation

Executive Doesn’t Know a Thing

The population is abandoned to their own luck at the airports, when air traffic breaks down. Paulistas and Fluminenses (those from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), among others,  have no one to turn to when their cities become lakes for lack of proper rain water drainage.

In the opposite end, if the drought devastates several regions, the remedy is to pray to Saint Joseph or Saint Peter because the plans to divert the river streams never left the drawing board. Faced with the unfortunate condition of public hospitals, where patients have to be laid down on the corridors floor, who will come forward with a solution?

Do we have perchance a single national structure capable of, upon taking up power, responding to the permanent and even routine hardships that come in constant and regular waves? Don’t even dream about it. But let us see. Is there a single political party that can call itself prepared to, in the government, be able to heed the basic needs of citizens always having to deal with nightmares?

In recent times the PMDB (Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement) seemed to have what it takes, but it happened what we saw. More recently, our hopes turned to the PT (the ruling Workers Party), which ended up becoming better known through the likes of Delúbios, Dirceus, Valérios, sanguessugas (bloodsuckers) and mensaleiros (congressmen involved in the cash for vote scandal).

Would it be possible that Congress would stand in for the parties? It is enough to recall that the now lame-duck legislature has been powerless in its attempt to create laws, which are able to solve some of our big and even small shortfalls.

About the Executive Power there is nothing we can say. It has always ignored every thing and it is never able to look ahead in order to prevent the unexpected and crises. And it continues mistaken if it believes that the magic formula of success lies in mere assistencialism.

Unions Turned into Clubs

The Judiciary Power? In the past, when the Estado Novo’s (New State) dictatorship fell, it prospered for a short time the motto "all power to the Judiciary," but it didn’t last long. With all due respect, judges today seem more concerned about readjusting their emolument.

You can’t count on the business community either because while some of them are merely interested in increasing their profits through speculation  others are just trying to escape bankruptcy and the fiscal hell that torments them.

Would the unions be the saving structure that would bring the nation to its tracks? Not at all! The big union confederations have also been transformed into recreational clubs, without the might to marshal the working class, except for one or another privileged category.

The church? Surrounded by anachronisms and undecipherable documents, the distance between the clergy and the faithful keeps increasing, while there is a  lack of new candidates to the priesthood and the Vatican keeps on spreading its backward ideas. From the evangelicals there is nothing to expect. They are simply committed to collect money and to promise that all will be solved in the other life.

The military have already had their opportunity and today they wouldn’t leave their barracks under any circumstances. They lack the will and also there is none of the needed popular appeal. Fortunately.

Would it be the press the national institution able to offer some way out for the impasse? Once again, no way! The TV garbage that deluges us blends with the unfortunate ways used to look for readers through the publication of the superfluous and the lowbrow, also with the honorable exceptions.

Without mentioning the excessive competition that throws the media apart and makes that the difficulties of some become the joy of others.

What is left then, as a national structure capable of taking over the responsibility to mend Brazil? Nothing. There is nothing left.

Carlos Chagas writes for the Rio’s daily Tribuna da Imprensa and is a representative of the Brazilian Press Association, in Brasília. He welcomes your comments at carloschagas@hotmail.com.

Translated from the Portuguese by Arlindo Silva.

CNBB’s general secretary, Dom Odilo Scherer, expressed discontent with the direction of the economy under the Lula administration, this week.

"Fiesp applauds the recent declarations by Dom Odilo Scherer when he called Brazil a financial paradise for banks," says a note from the Fiesp President, Paulo Skaf.

"The men who are making the country’s economic policy decisions are not bad men. But they are obsessed with a phantom that has long been taken care of: inflation.

"These are new times. We need men with the courage and responsibility to reduce interest rates and increase income distribution," concluded Skaf.

ABr

Rev. Tarcí­sio Tadeu Spricigo was convicted of molesting the boys, ages five and 13, between 2001 and 2002 in Anápolis, state of Goiás, in the Brazilian midwest. Spricigo currently is jailed in São Paulo on similar charges.

The Brazilian priest has denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyers have pledged to appeal, the court’s press officer Patricia Papini said by telephone from Goiânia, capital of Goiás. His conviction comes amid widening concerns of sexual abuse among Brazilian priests.

Earlier this month, priest Felix Barbosa Carreiro was arrested and charged with pedophilia in the northeastern state of Maranhão after police seized him in a hotel room with four teenage boys.

In January, Geraldo da Consolação Machado, the priest of a small parish in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, was sentenced to almost nine years in jail for sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy.

Brazil is the world’s largest Roman Catholic country. Nearly 70 percent of its 185 million people are Catholics.

Recent press reports from Rome said the Vatican has sent a special commission to Brazil to investigate sexual misconduct among Brazilian priests. The Brazilian Bishop’s Council denied any knowledge of such a commission.

According to the national news magazine Isto í‰, a papal commission found 10 percent of Brazil’s 1,700 priests to have been involved in sexual misconduct and 200 priests had been committed to psychological institutions for pedophilia over the past three years.

This article appeared originally in Pravda – www.pravda.ru.

People going to Brazilian churches these days have the opportunity not only to free themselves of the weight of their sins but also of their weapons and the risks entailed in their possession.

In Brazil, civilians possess nearly 10 times the number of firearms as those held by state agencies. At the same time, the country tops world figures on the number of gun-related deaths each year.

It may therefore come as no surprise that Brazilian churches are actively participating in a government-sponsored disarmament campaign aimed at the civil population.

Since the end of last year, Brazilian churches have been mobilizing their local communities to open stands to receive weapons in parishes and other community centers. Weapons handed in are then turned over to the government’s Voluntary Weapons Collection Campaign.

Inaugurated on 15 July 2004, the aim of the official campaign is to collect weapons without asking “difficult” questions about their origin.

Moreover, people turning in non registered firearms receive between 100 and 300 Reais (US$ 40-120) per weapon, depending on its type. The campaign was originally slated to conclude on 23 December 2004 and the aim was to collect 80,000 weapons.

However, in November last year, a request that it continue throughout 2005 was submitted by the country’s National Council of Christian Churches (CONIC), which brings together the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Church of Lutheran Confession, as well as the Catholic Syrian Orthodox, Episcopal Anglican, Christian Reformed, Methodist and United Presbyterian churches.

The request was presented to Vice President José Alencar Gomes da Silva during a meeting between him and the World Council of Churches general secretary, Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, who was visiting the country at that time.

“The population needs time to be informed and to decide,” said CONIC in its petition. It promised that if the campaign was extended, “hundreds” of churches across the nation could become involved.

Along with the ecumenical body, other civil society organizations also lobbied for more time. Six weeks after receiving CONIC’s request, the government extended the campaign to 23 June 2005.

The churches are now determined to make good on their promise. CONIC is working to bring the number of stands collecting weapons in churches to nearly 300 across the nation. With that goal, a team of facilitators is currently holding training workshops in the country’s main cities.

The reception points in churches operate on Saturdays in order to encourage people who are unable to come during the working week. Additionally, that kind of venue encourages those who are reluctant to approach a state agency to hand over their weapons.

“Many people are more confident approaching a church than a police station,” says Lutheran pastor Ervino Schmidt, secretary general of CONIC. This is partly due to the image that the population has of the police and to the fact that nine out of every ten guns turned in are illegal.

Bishop Odilo Pedro Scherer, general secretary of the National (Catholic) Bishops’ Conference of Brazil, estimates that the churches could collect over 100,000 weapons. The current official goal now stands at 400,000 weapons.

Caravans and Fasting Days: Anything Goes

According to the study “Brazil, the weapons and the victims” carried out by the Religious Studies Institute of Rio de Janeiro and the non-governmental organization Viva Rio, 15.5 million weapons in the country are in the hands of civilians.

The figure is equal to 10 times the number of weapons in the hands of state agents. Of those, 8.7 million are illegal: they are in the hands of criminals or have been sold on the informal market and are not registered.

The study also determined that more than 38,000 people died in Brazil in 2002 from gun-related injuries. The figure includes the victims of homicide, suicide and accidents, and according to the study places Brazil in first place with the highest number of deaths from this cause in the world. There were 30,242 gun-related deaths in the USA in 2002.

As well as churches, other organizations, like the Brazilian Bar Association, are participating in the campaign. Caravans for disarmament, television spots and advertising on public transport, flyers and street posters, free phone lines and even fasting days – anything goes when it comes to promoting the campaign.

Its promoters are working to extend it to outlying areas and to the interior. And to focus on youth. “We know of young people in the outlying areas who want to turn in their weapons but are afraid, so we must reach them,” says Valéria Velasco, coordinator of the Victims of Violence Committee.

For some critics, the campaign disarms honest citizens and does not affect criminals.

“This is a major misconception regarding its objective,” says sociologist Antônio Rangel, from Viva Rio.

The campaign seeks to “decrease the number of deaths from homicides among relatives, youth suicides and accidents”. Accidents are responsible for one-third of all hospitalizations due to gun-related injuries.

By removing the weapons from circulation, the campaign also ends up affecting criminals. Nearly 30 percent of weapons captured by the police were stolen or bought from honest citizens.

A Spiritual Issue

“Whoever lets a weapon into their house has first let it enter their soul,” says Fr Gabriele Cipriani. A Catholic priest and deputy secretary of CONIC, Cipriani synthesizes the particular contribution that Brazilian churches bring to the campaign: disarmament is a spiritual issue.

“Turning over a weapon near a church can also be a religious act,” says Scherer. It is “a moment of interior liberation”, an opportunity to “manifest to God our aim to renounce violence”.

It is not just a question of reducing the number of weapons, but of building a culture of peace, says Schmidt. “Above all, we must disarm the spirits.” A special prayer is available for the moment when the weapon is handed over.

In the short as well as in the long term, the objectives of the CONIC churches are ambitious.

For the short term, they are lobbying the government to extend the disarmament deadline to 23 December. In this way, they hope to increase significantly the impact of the campaign.

They are also stepping up their efforts before a plebiscite slated to take place on 2 October. Mandated by national law, the public should vote on the proposal to ban the civilian trade of firearms in the country.

With an energetic lobby in the National Congress and in the Justice Ministry, churches together with civil society organizations are trying to counter maneuvers that seek to avoid or postpone the plebiscite.

“Christian churches have adopted an active and committed position with civil society in the struggle against the weapons industry,” says CONIC president and Bishop of the Methodist Church Adriel de Souza Maia.

For him, ecumenism needs to take on the major causes of humanity. That is why he sees a strong link between the theme of the upcoming WCC 9th assembly in Porto Alegre in February 2006 and the disarmament campaign that the same churches which invited the assembly to Brazil are now involved in.

“As we pray ‘God, in your grace, transform the world’, says de Souza Maia, “we are encouraged to work for concrete changes to overcome the paradigm of violence and death that small arms represent. The God-given gracious gift of life is the paradigm that leads us to action.”

———–

Praying for a Transformed World

The 9th assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) will be held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from 14-23 February 2006. Its theme is a prayer: “God, in your grace, transform the world”.

The first WCC assembly of the 21st century, it will gather up to 3,000 church leaders and ecumenical representatives from nearly every Christian tradition around the world. As such, it will be one of the broadest global gatherings of its kind.

WCC assemblies are often turning points in the life of the World Council, and this one is expected to leave its mark on ecumenical history.

Deliberations will focus on issues such as the future of the ecumenical movement, the churches’ commitment to economic justice as well as their witness to overcoming violence, and the challenges faced in the midst of religious plurality.

In Porto Alegre, members of the ecumenical family will be able to gather around the assembly at a “mutirão,” a Portuguese word that means coming together for a common purpose.

Made up of workshops, exhibitions and cultural celebrations, this part of the assembly program will offer opportunities for members of the wider ecumenical movement to gather, reflect and celebrate together.

This is the first WCC assembly to be held in Latin America, and it is being hosted by the National Council of Christian Churches in Brazil (CONIC) on behalf of churches throughout the region. Pre-assembly events for youth and for women will be held from 11-13 February.

Juan Michel, World Council of Churches’ media relations officer, is a member of the Evangelical Church of the River Plate in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

National Council of Christian Churches in Brazil (CONIC) www.conic.org.br

National Bishops’ Conference of Brazil (CNNB)
www.cnbb.org.br

Viva Rio
www.vivario.org.br

Desarme.org
www.desarme.org

Assembly website
www.wcc-assembly.info

Brazil remains the world’s most Catholic country, but over the past 20 years the Catholic Church has been losing sizable ground, especially to the evangelical faiths. Still 126 million people, or 74% of the population, consider themselves Catholics. The number of people without religion has also increased.

These data are part of the “Portrait of Religions in Brazil,” released on Wednesday, April 20, by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV). The study was based on the most recent demographic census, conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in 2000.

According to the director of the center of Social Policies (CPS) of the FGV’s Brazilian Economics Institute, Marcelo Neri, the Catholic portion of the country’s population declined 20% between 1940 and 2000.

According to the economist, the study reveals that, among the many socioeconomic variables, such as marriage, fertility, occupation, income, and inequality, that are covered in the most recent censuses, none has changed as much as the religious composition of the Brazilian population.

In Neri’s view, this situation may be related to the economic stagnation of recent years.

“Perhaps the Church is presently seen, on the one hand, as a form of upward social mobility, while, on the other, the new emerging churches play an essential role in terms of the social protection network. A social protection network that substitutes the State,” the economist explained.

The study also shows that over the last 30 years women are becoming less Catholic, even though they are still more religious than men. According to the “Portrait of Religions in Brazil,” the female presence outweighs the male in 43 of the 50 religions that are listed.

For Neri, the conservatism of the Catholic Church constitutes another likely factor behind the growth of other religions, chiefly the evangelical Pentecostalists.

“In the past 30 years of feminist revolution, in which women have gained ground in the labor market and the educational system, to the point of surpassing men, perhaps the Catholic religion has not provided the space women need for this reinsertion in society,” Neri affirmed.

Agência Brasil