Tuesday, July 30, 2013 4:52:01 AM
Pope Francis Defends Amazon And Environment In Brazil
By BRADLEY BROOKS
07/27/13 06:03 PM ET EDT
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Pope Francis took on the defense of the Amazon and the environment near the end of his weeklong trip to Brazil, as he donned a colorful Indian headdress Saturday and urged that the rainforest be treated as a garden.
The pontiff met with a few thousand of Brazil's political, business and cultural elite in Rio de Janeiro's Municipal Theater, where he also shook hands with Indians who said they were from a tribe that has been battling ranchers and farmers trying to invade their land in northeastern Bahia state.
In a separate speech to bishops, the pope called for "respect and protection of the entire creation which God has entrusted to man, not so that it be indiscriminately exploited but rather made into a garden."
He also urged attention to a 2007 document by Latin American and Caribbean bishops that he was in charge of drafting, which underscored dangers facing the Amazon environment and the native people living there. The document also called for new evangelization efforts to halt a steep decline in Catholics leaving for other faiths or secularism.
"The traditional communities have been practically excluded from decisions on the wealth of biodiversity and nature. Nature has been, and continues to be, assaulted," the document reads.
Several of the indigenous people in the audience hailed from the Amazon and said they hoped the pope would help them protect land designated by the government as indigenous reserves but that farmers and ranchers illegally invade for timber and to graze cattle. In fact, grazing has been the top recent cause of deforestation in Brazil.
"We got credentials for his speech and attended so we could tell the pope what's happening to our people," said Levi Xerente, a 22-year-old member of the Xerente tribe in Tocantins state in the Amazon, after he attended the pope's speech. "We hope that he will help intervene with the government and stop all the big public works projects that are happening in the region."
Xerente, speaking in broken Portuguese, said the biggest threats to Indians in the region were big agribusiness invading land and the government's own massive infrastructure projects, including the damming of rivers for hydroelectric power generation and roads being carved out of the forest, often to reach giant mines.
Francis thanked Brazilian bishops for maintaining a church presence in the rugged and vast Amazon, which is about the size of the United States west of the Mississippi River. But he pushed church leaders to refocus energies on the region.
"The church's work needs to be further encouraged and launched afresh" in the Amazon, the pope said in prepared remarks, urging an "Amazonian face" for the church.
He cited the church's long history of working in the region.
"The church's presence in the Amazon basin is not that of someone with bags packed and ready to leave after having exploited everything possible," he said. "The church has been present in the Amazon basin from the beginning ... and is still present and critical to the area's future."
Catholic priests and nuns have taken up the causes of Indians and of poor subsistence farmers in the Amazon, often putting themselves in danger. Violent conflicts over land rights are common in the region, where wealthy farmers and ranchers are known to hire gunmen to intimidate people into leaving land the government has often set aside as reserves for their use.
In 2005, U.S. nun and Amazon land-rights defender Dorothy Stang was murdered by one such gunman in the state of Para. Two ranchers were later convicted of ordering her murder so they could control a parcel of land the government had ceded to a subsistence farming group Stang worked with.
Associated Press writer Jenny Barchfield contributed to this report.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/27/pope-francis-brazil_n_3664950.html [with comments]
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Pope’s Trip to Brazil Seen as ‘Strong Start’ in Revitalizing Church
Nuns waded into the water at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.
Nicolas Tanner/Associated Press
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: July 28, 2013
RIO DE JANEIRO — Pope Francis [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/francis_i/index.html ] celebrated the last Mass of his trip to Brazil on Sunday before more than a million people gathered on the beach in this city, the national flags of Catholics from around the world hoisted in the air as a chorus of Brazilian priests belted out songs before the multitude. It was a vibrant display of the Vatican’s ambition of halting the losses of worshipers to evangelical churches and the rising appeal of secularism.
By various measures, Francis’s first international trip since he was named pope this year [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/world/europe/cardinals-elect-new-pope.html ] was a success. The 76-year-old Argentine, a Jesuit who is the first pope from the Americas, was greeted like a rock star by attendees to a conference of Catholic youth. He urged people to combat corruption [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/world/americas/touring-slum-in-rio-pope-urges-young-to-fight-against-corruption.html ], a top grievance in the protests shaking Brazil, and called on bishops to focus on the pragmatic needs of congregants, shifting emphasis from the abuse scandals that have plagued the Vatican for years.
“If this trip is any indication, he’s off to a strong start at revitalizing the church,” said Andrew Chesnut, an expert on Latin American religions at Virginia Commonwealth University [ http://www.has.vcu.edu/wld/faculty/chesnut.html ] who came here to see the pope’s visit up close. “He’s been very astute on focusing on the everyday afflictions of the poor, taking a page from the evangelicals themselves.”
Before scolding Brazilian clergy at one point during the weeklong visit for losing touch with their own worshipers, by appearing “too distant from their needs,” Francis offered the example of visiting a medical center where drug addicts receive treatment. Still, he hewed to the Roman Catholic Church’s prevailing view on drugs, criticizing supporters of decriminalizing drug use, showing how a pope can seem at the same time to be caring and resistant to a profound shift under way in parts of the world.
“Francis is more simpatico than John Paul II, certainly more likable than Benedict, but transforming the church requires more than public relations gestures, appealing as they might be,” said Peter McDonough, a scholar of religion who has written widely on the Jesuits, comparing Francis with his predecessors. “It’s doubtful, aside from a positive bump in applications to the priesthood and perhaps a groundswell in confessions, that Pope Francis’s visit to Brazil will stem the loss of congregants to evangelical and other denominations or reverse the tide of secularization.”
Still, if there is any place to forge ahead with strategies aimed at fortifying the Roman Catholic Church, it is Latin America. Just three countries in the region — Brazil, Mexico and Colombia — account for about a quarter of all Catholics in the world, according to a study of the global Catholic population [ http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Catholic/The-Global-Catholic-Population.aspx ] by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Brazil has more Catholics, an estimated 123 million, than any other country.
Yet Brazil also showcases the threats to Catholicism. Just 65 percent of Brazilians identify as Catholics, compared with 85 percent of Mexicans. Almost 25 percent of Brazilians are now evangelical, up from single-digit levels in the 1970s, and a growing number of people reject religious doctrine completely, opting for a thoroughly secular lifestyle.
Illustrating Brazil’s diversity of beliefs, various protests coalesced around the pope’s visit. One of them, a Marcha das Vadias, or SlutWalk, involved scantily clad women questioning the Catholic Church’s opposition to legalized abortion, women as priests and same-sex marriage. At one point, a man reportedly spit on of the face of one of the protesters [ http://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2013/07/27/peregrino-cospe-no-rosto-de-manifestante-da-marcha-das-vadias.htm ], only to have several women in the protest show him their breasts and shake their behinds at him in defiance.
But while a Carnivalesque atmosphere prevailed in some Rio neighborhoods, a more relaxed vibe was evident in many parts of the city during the pope’s visit. Pilgrims from around the world roamed through the streets. Some strummed guitars, singing religious hymns from their homelands. Thousands camped on the beach, shrugging at the blunders by local organizers like an accidental shutdown one day of the subway system.
“I will never forget this moment in all of my life,” Wael Sami, 22, an Iraqi Catholic who traveled here from Baghdad, said on Sunday. “I have been to many countries, but I think this is the coolest,” said Mr. Sami, a student of computer programming. “When they see our flag and know there are Christian people in Iraq, they are so excited.”
While shifting attention to Latin America and other parts of the developing world, Francis notably welcomed the participation during Mass of the Charismatic Catholic Renovation, a movement of singing priests, some of them heartthrobs with hit CDs, seeking to appeal to congregants with upbeat, lively strategies similar to those employed by fast-growing evangelical churches.
“I think this pope is breaking protocol,” said Saulo Palacio, 35, a computer technician who attended a religious service on Sunday at his evangelical church here, Nova Vida, or New Life. “We don’t agree on everything, but I recognize he’s different, maybe since he’s South American,” he said. “He could change things in the Catholic Church, but I’m not switching back to Catholic rites, not when my church is a happier place, with more emotion.”
Getting some evangelicals to even consider a return to Catholicism may be the start of a shift in the church’s fortunes in Latin America. But some scholars warn that the Vatican remains far from undergoing a broader transformation, with Francis, who returned to the Vatican on Sunday night, opposed to allowing women a more prominent role in carrying out religious services or allowing priests to marry.
“The gestures have changed, but the dogma has not,” said Fortunato Mallimaci, a sociologist at the University of Buenos Aires who specializes in the relationship between culture and religion, pointing to the example of the pope’s stance against legalizing drugs. “On social issues, Francis will be a continuation of his predecessors.”
Still, it was undeniable that Francis’s easygoing and ascetic style aroused optimism among many here that the Catholic Church could be on the cusp of a long-awaited revival. Leonardo Boff, a prominent liberation theologian who was reprimanded in the 1980s by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI , said Francis was repositioning the Catholic Church “from a fortress to an open house.”
“We’re exiting two papacies characterized by the return to great discipline and the control of doctrines,” Mr. Boff, 74, a former Franciscan priest, wrote during the pope’s visit. “With Pope Francis, coming from outside old European Christianity, he brings hope and enjoyment of life.”
Taylor Barnes and Paula Ramon contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro, and Jonathan Gilbert from Buenos Aires.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/world/americas/vibrant-display-at-popes-last-mass-in-brazil.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/world/americas/vibrant-display-at-popes-last-mass-in-brazil.html?pagewanted=all ]
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Mexico Outraged At Video Of City Inspector Humiliating Young Tzotzil Street Vendor
By MARK STEVENSON
07/26/13 10:20 PM ET EDT
MEXICO CITY -- A 10-year-old Indian street vendor whose humiliation by a city inspector tugged on the heart strings of Mexicans after a video of it appeared on social media was showered Friday with attention and the offer of a scholarship.
The video shows the poor, sandal-clad Tzotzil boy selling candy, cough drops and apparently cigarettes out of a wicker basket in Villahermosa, the capital of the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. State officials say the boy, Manuel Diaz Hernandez, was trying to earn money to buy his own school supplies.
A city inspector, identified as Juan Diego Lopez, spots the boy, confronts him and takes several packs of cigarettes from his basket. It is prohibited in Mexico for minors to buy or sell cigarettes.
In the video, Manuel can be seen weeping inconsolably as the inspector forces him to take all the candy in his basket, handful by handful, and toss it on the pavement. The cost of the candy and cigarettes could well be more than the boy would earn with a week's work.
As the inspector walks off with the boy's cigarettes, another man steps forward to help him try to pick up the sweets, and Manuel collapses into a squatting position, covering his face with his arms, rocking back and forth and sobbing loudly. The encounter took place on Monday.
The video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times over the last few days, and on Friday the governmental National Human Rights Commission announced it would investigate the case. The city announced on Wednesday that it has fired the inspector.
It was the latest victory for social media in winning some measure of justice in Mexico. In recent years, social media have exposed a number of scandals and instances of mistreatment that often would have gone overlooked in the past.
"Any form of violence against children is totally unacceptable, especially when directed against Indians, who are one of the most vulnerable groups in the country," the rights commission said in a statement.
Street vendors in Mexico frequently sell single cigarettes to passers-by at twice their original price, for people who don't have the time or money to buy a full pack. Officials agreed that the punishment meted out to the boy for selling cigarettes was out of line, especially in the southeast, a part of the country where Indians were routinely enslaved a century ago.
The Tabasco state prosecutors' office said the boy's aunt, Maria Diaz Diaz, said she had brought Manuel to Villahermosa about 10 days earlier. She said the boy lives with his grandparents in the Tzotzil Indian village of San Juan Chamula, in neighboring Chiapas state, and wanted to work during his summer vacation to raise money for school supplies in the fall. Mexican children get free textbooks, but often have to buy their own pencils, paper and uniforms.
Tabasco state Gov. Arturo Nunez announced Thursday his administration would give Manuel and his family "a scholarship, as well as all medical and psychological help for the boy."
Lupita Santiago, a spokeswoman for the Chiapas state child welfare agency, said Manuel speaks only limited Spanish. His age is listed as 10, but in rural communities like his hometown births are often not registered until much later.
They boy, who appears short for his age, had returned to his village following the incident, apparently fearing retaliation by Villahermosa officials.
"The boy is doing well," Santiago noted. He didn't suffer physical harassment, but it was harassment."
The child welfare agency is also providing the boy "all necessary help," she said.
The Tabasco state prosecutors' office said Friday it had detained another municipal employee who participated in the incident and is investigating both workers on suspicion of abuse of authority and theft.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/27/mexico-street-vendor-video_n_3664448.html [the YouTube, as embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYKNrxUdhKQ ; with comments]
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A Cash Lure Cast From the Temple
By ALAN COWELL
Published: July 29, 2013
LONDON — As the scriptures tell it, Jesus expelled the money changers from the temple to cleanse it of a “den of thieves.” With some discernible echoes, the newly appointed archbishop of Canterbury has initiated a comparable crusade against newer financiers charging enormous interest on what are called payday loans.
Unlike the biblical showdown, though, the outcome of this newest confrontation seems freighted with moral ambiguity, risk and potential ridicule.
The archbishop, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, made news last week by declaring what headline writers called war on Wonga, one of the biggest high-interest lenders whose name is derived from a slang term for money. His aim, the cleric said, was quite literally to drive the company out of business by throwing the church’s support behind small-loan institutions like credit unions with much lower interest rates. (Payday loans are short-term, unsecured loans for relatively small amounts — usually as much as £1,000, or $1500 — to be repaid from the borrower’s next paycheck.)
“The Lend is Nigh,” The Sun tabloid declared in wordplay on evangelical billboards foretelling Armageddon.
But, no sooner had the archbishop girded himself in his mantle against Mammon than the Church of England was forced to admit that the managers of its £5.5 billion portfolio had invested some £75,000 in a private equity group linked to, yes, Wonga.
“It’s very embarrassing,” the archbishop said, discussing an array of awkward issues about the church, its investment practices and the question of whether the distinction between good and evil could ever be relative, particularly for a body that casts itself as a font of moral authority.
“We can’t say that we tolerate bad things,” the archbishop said in a BBC interview. “But you’ve got to live in the real world, and living in the real world means life is often very complicated, and you can’t escape the complexity.”
The matter of payday loans had initially seemed clear-cut.
As the archbishop recounted in a magazine interview, when he met the Wonga boss Errol Damelin, he told him “quite bluntly: We are not in the business of trying to legislate you out of existence; we’re trying to compete you out of existence.”
Fighting talk, indeed. But that should not really have been a surprise.
Long before he took over this year as head of both the Church of England and the broader Anglican Communion of some 80 million souls, Archbishop Welby worked in an oil company as a financial executive — no stranger, thus, to hard-nosed business calls.
He is also a member of a parliamentary panel investigating the standards of Britain’s banking industry after the financial crisis of 2008 — no stranger either to the wiles of capitalism and the corrosive lure of lucre.
The archbishop’s aversion to payday loans has been shared by politicians of all stripes, although some analysts labeled the cleric’s ideas naïve, akin to what one critic called “Kumbayah capitalism.”
With tongue in cheek, the columnist Ally Fogg of The Guardian likened the archbishop’s Wonga warning to the tough-guy talk of the television mobster Tony Soprano.
“I was drawn to a reverie starring gangs of pepped-up curates descending upon Wonga shops with pool cues, systematically laying waste to fixtures and fittings, and then throwing a line to the terrified branch manager: ‘Hey, it’s nothing personal. It’s just competition — capisce?”’ Mr. Fogg wrote [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/25/justin-welby-tony-soprano-wonga-payday ].
The less ribald question was whether the Church of England should seek to become an active player, rather than a supposedly principled and ethical investor, in such sharp-elbowed and worldly markets.
After all, the scriptures enjoin Christians to render “unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Was the archbishop, in other words, crossing a line between the spiritual and the temporal; or was he, as an editorial in The Financial Times [ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f33b5b64-f532-11e2-b4f8-00144feabdc0.html ] put it, merely showing “how the church aspires to be a potent force for good?”
Even before the Wonga affair, the church’s investment principles seemed ambivalent, beset by what one analyst called “inconsistencies and absurdities.”
The church, for instance, may not invest in companies that make more than 3 percent of their profits from pornography or 10 percent from arms sales. For companies that profit from high-interest loans, the bar is set at 25 percent — a level the archbishop now says should be lowered.
Compared to the challenges facing Pope Francis over the scandals swirling around the Vatican Bank [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/world/europe/cleric-and-2-others-arrested-in-vatican-bank-investigation.html ], an Anglican dabble in small-loan lending might seem innocuous. But for the usually poor borrowers, the price of quick cash to be repaid in short order is often painful, particularly for those who default.
Annual interest rates frequently exceed 5,000 percent. Those who do not repay their loans on time find themselves enslaved by ever-mounting, unpayable debt.
The spread of such high-interest lending is one more token of the broadening gap between the very rich and the very poor in Britain as austerity measures pare away benefits payments while conventional banks show little readiness to lend, even to those with sound credit ratings. The authorities estimate that about seven million people use high-cost credit. The payday loan business is valued at some £2.2 billion a year.
The archbishop’s proposal is that the Church of England should make available qualified volunteers and some of its 16,000 premises across the land to strengthen the smaller and far less lucrative credit union business — even if that does seem to invite a new kind of moneymaker back into the temple.
“There is a totally inadequate range of choice for consumers in deprived areas,” Archbishop Welby said. “I’ve seen it. I’ve lived in these areas and worked in them. I’ve had staff who’ve been caught up in it and have had to be helped and have had their lives destroyed by it. This is something that really matters to me.”
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/world/europe/30iht-letter30.html
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By BRADLEY BROOKS
07/27/13 06:03 PM ET EDT
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Pope Francis took on the defense of the Amazon and the environment near the end of his weeklong trip to Brazil, as he donned a colorful Indian headdress Saturday and urged that the rainforest be treated as a garden.
The pontiff met with a few thousand of Brazil's political, business and cultural elite in Rio de Janeiro's Municipal Theater, where he also shook hands with Indians who said they were from a tribe that has been battling ranchers and farmers trying to invade their land in northeastern Bahia state.
In a separate speech to bishops, the pope called for "respect and protection of the entire creation which God has entrusted to man, not so that it be indiscriminately exploited but rather made into a garden."
He also urged attention to a 2007 document by Latin American and Caribbean bishops that he was in charge of drafting, which underscored dangers facing the Amazon environment and the native people living there. The document also called for new evangelization efforts to halt a steep decline in Catholics leaving for other faiths or secularism.
"The traditional communities have been practically excluded from decisions on the wealth of biodiversity and nature. Nature has been, and continues to be, assaulted," the document reads.
Several of the indigenous people in the audience hailed from the Amazon and said they hoped the pope would help them protect land designated by the government as indigenous reserves but that farmers and ranchers illegally invade for timber and to graze cattle. In fact, grazing has been the top recent cause of deforestation in Brazil.
"We got credentials for his speech and attended so we could tell the pope what's happening to our people," said Levi Xerente, a 22-year-old member of the Xerente tribe in Tocantins state in the Amazon, after he attended the pope's speech. "We hope that he will help intervene with the government and stop all the big public works projects that are happening in the region."
Xerente, speaking in broken Portuguese, said the biggest threats to Indians in the region were big agribusiness invading land and the government's own massive infrastructure projects, including the damming of rivers for hydroelectric power generation and roads being carved out of the forest, often to reach giant mines.
Francis thanked Brazilian bishops for maintaining a church presence in the rugged and vast Amazon, which is about the size of the United States west of the Mississippi River. But he pushed church leaders to refocus energies on the region.
"The church's work needs to be further encouraged and launched afresh" in the Amazon, the pope said in prepared remarks, urging an "Amazonian face" for the church.
He cited the church's long history of working in the region.
"The church's presence in the Amazon basin is not that of someone with bags packed and ready to leave after having exploited everything possible," he said. "The church has been present in the Amazon basin from the beginning ... and is still present and critical to the area's future."
Catholic priests and nuns have taken up the causes of Indians and of poor subsistence farmers in the Amazon, often putting themselves in danger. Violent conflicts over land rights are common in the region, where wealthy farmers and ranchers are known to hire gunmen to intimidate people into leaving land the government has often set aside as reserves for their use.
In 2005, U.S. nun and Amazon land-rights defender Dorothy Stang was murdered by one such gunman in the state of Para. Two ranchers were later convicted of ordering her murder so they could control a parcel of land the government had ceded to a subsistence farming group Stang worked with.
Associated Press writer Jenny Barchfield contributed to this report.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/27/pope-francis-brazil_n_3664950.html [with comments]
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Pope’s Trip to Brazil Seen as ‘Strong Start’ in Revitalizing Church
Nuns waded into the water at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.
Nicolas Tanner/Associated Press
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: July 28, 2013
RIO DE JANEIRO — Pope Francis [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/francis_i/index.html ] celebrated the last Mass of his trip to Brazil on Sunday before more than a million people gathered on the beach in this city, the national flags of Catholics from around the world hoisted in the air as a chorus of Brazilian priests belted out songs before the multitude. It was a vibrant display of the Vatican’s ambition of halting the losses of worshipers to evangelical churches and the rising appeal of secularism.
By various measures, Francis’s first international trip since he was named pope this year [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/world/europe/cardinals-elect-new-pope.html ] was a success. The 76-year-old Argentine, a Jesuit who is the first pope from the Americas, was greeted like a rock star by attendees to a conference of Catholic youth. He urged people to combat corruption [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/world/americas/touring-slum-in-rio-pope-urges-young-to-fight-against-corruption.html ], a top grievance in the protests shaking Brazil, and called on bishops to focus on the pragmatic needs of congregants, shifting emphasis from the abuse scandals that have plagued the Vatican for years.
“If this trip is any indication, he’s off to a strong start at revitalizing the church,” said Andrew Chesnut, an expert on Latin American religions at Virginia Commonwealth University [ http://www.has.vcu.edu/wld/faculty/chesnut.html ] who came here to see the pope’s visit up close. “He’s been very astute on focusing on the everyday afflictions of the poor, taking a page from the evangelicals themselves.”
Before scolding Brazilian clergy at one point during the weeklong visit for losing touch with their own worshipers, by appearing “too distant from their needs,” Francis offered the example of visiting a medical center where drug addicts receive treatment. Still, he hewed to the Roman Catholic Church’s prevailing view on drugs, criticizing supporters of decriminalizing drug use, showing how a pope can seem at the same time to be caring and resistant to a profound shift under way in parts of the world.
“Francis is more simpatico than John Paul II, certainly more likable than Benedict, but transforming the church requires more than public relations gestures, appealing as they might be,” said Peter McDonough, a scholar of religion who has written widely on the Jesuits, comparing Francis with his predecessors. “It’s doubtful, aside from a positive bump in applications to the priesthood and perhaps a groundswell in confessions, that Pope Francis’s visit to Brazil will stem the loss of congregants to evangelical and other denominations or reverse the tide of secularization.”
Still, if there is any place to forge ahead with strategies aimed at fortifying the Roman Catholic Church, it is Latin America. Just three countries in the region — Brazil, Mexico and Colombia — account for about a quarter of all Catholics in the world, according to a study of the global Catholic population [ http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Catholic/The-Global-Catholic-Population.aspx ] by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Brazil has more Catholics, an estimated 123 million, than any other country.
Yet Brazil also showcases the threats to Catholicism. Just 65 percent of Brazilians identify as Catholics, compared with 85 percent of Mexicans. Almost 25 percent of Brazilians are now evangelical, up from single-digit levels in the 1970s, and a growing number of people reject religious doctrine completely, opting for a thoroughly secular lifestyle.
Illustrating Brazil’s diversity of beliefs, various protests coalesced around the pope’s visit. One of them, a Marcha das Vadias, or SlutWalk, involved scantily clad women questioning the Catholic Church’s opposition to legalized abortion, women as priests and same-sex marriage. At one point, a man reportedly spit on of the face of one of the protesters [ http://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2013/07/27/peregrino-cospe-no-rosto-de-manifestante-da-marcha-das-vadias.htm ], only to have several women in the protest show him their breasts and shake their behinds at him in defiance.
But while a Carnivalesque atmosphere prevailed in some Rio neighborhoods, a more relaxed vibe was evident in many parts of the city during the pope’s visit. Pilgrims from around the world roamed through the streets. Some strummed guitars, singing religious hymns from their homelands. Thousands camped on the beach, shrugging at the blunders by local organizers like an accidental shutdown one day of the subway system.
“I will never forget this moment in all of my life,” Wael Sami, 22, an Iraqi Catholic who traveled here from Baghdad, said on Sunday. “I have been to many countries, but I think this is the coolest,” said Mr. Sami, a student of computer programming. “When they see our flag and know there are Christian people in Iraq, they are so excited.”
While shifting attention to Latin America and other parts of the developing world, Francis notably welcomed the participation during Mass of the Charismatic Catholic Renovation, a movement of singing priests, some of them heartthrobs with hit CDs, seeking to appeal to congregants with upbeat, lively strategies similar to those employed by fast-growing evangelical churches.
“I think this pope is breaking protocol,” said Saulo Palacio, 35, a computer technician who attended a religious service on Sunday at his evangelical church here, Nova Vida, or New Life. “We don’t agree on everything, but I recognize he’s different, maybe since he’s South American,” he said. “He could change things in the Catholic Church, but I’m not switching back to Catholic rites, not when my church is a happier place, with more emotion.”
Getting some evangelicals to even consider a return to Catholicism may be the start of a shift in the church’s fortunes in Latin America. But some scholars warn that the Vatican remains far from undergoing a broader transformation, with Francis, who returned to the Vatican on Sunday night, opposed to allowing women a more prominent role in carrying out religious services or allowing priests to marry.
“The gestures have changed, but the dogma has not,” said Fortunato Mallimaci, a sociologist at the University of Buenos Aires who specializes in the relationship between culture and religion, pointing to the example of the pope’s stance against legalizing drugs. “On social issues, Francis will be a continuation of his predecessors.”
Still, it was undeniable that Francis’s easygoing and ascetic style aroused optimism among many here that the Catholic Church could be on the cusp of a long-awaited revival. Leonardo Boff, a prominent liberation theologian who was reprimanded in the 1980s by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI , said Francis was repositioning the Catholic Church “from a fortress to an open house.”
“We’re exiting two papacies characterized by the return to great discipline and the control of doctrines,” Mr. Boff, 74, a former Franciscan priest, wrote during the pope’s visit. “With Pope Francis, coming from outside old European Christianity, he brings hope and enjoyment of life.”
Taylor Barnes and Paula Ramon contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro, and Jonathan Gilbert from Buenos Aires.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/world/americas/vibrant-display-at-popes-last-mass-in-brazil.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/world/americas/vibrant-display-at-popes-last-mass-in-brazil.html?pagewanted=all ]
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Mexico Outraged At Video Of City Inspector Humiliating Young Tzotzil Street Vendor
By MARK STEVENSON
07/26/13 10:20 PM ET EDT
MEXICO CITY -- A 10-year-old Indian street vendor whose humiliation by a city inspector tugged on the heart strings of Mexicans after a video of it appeared on social media was showered Friday with attention and the offer of a scholarship.
The video shows the poor, sandal-clad Tzotzil boy selling candy, cough drops and apparently cigarettes out of a wicker basket in Villahermosa, the capital of the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. State officials say the boy, Manuel Diaz Hernandez, was trying to earn money to buy his own school supplies.
A city inspector, identified as Juan Diego Lopez, spots the boy, confronts him and takes several packs of cigarettes from his basket. It is prohibited in Mexico for minors to buy or sell cigarettes.
In the video, Manuel can be seen weeping inconsolably as the inspector forces him to take all the candy in his basket, handful by handful, and toss it on the pavement. The cost of the candy and cigarettes could well be more than the boy would earn with a week's work.
As the inspector walks off with the boy's cigarettes, another man steps forward to help him try to pick up the sweets, and Manuel collapses into a squatting position, covering his face with his arms, rocking back and forth and sobbing loudly. The encounter took place on Monday.
The video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times over the last few days, and on Friday the governmental National Human Rights Commission announced it would investigate the case. The city announced on Wednesday that it has fired the inspector.
It was the latest victory for social media in winning some measure of justice in Mexico. In recent years, social media have exposed a number of scandals and instances of mistreatment that often would have gone overlooked in the past.
"Any form of violence against children is totally unacceptable, especially when directed against Indians, who are one of the most vulnerable groups in the country," the rights commission said in a statement.
Street vendors in Mexico frequently sell single cigarettes to passers-by at twice their original price, for people who don't have the time or money to buy a full pack. Officials agreed that the punishment meted out to the boy for selling cigarettes was out of line, especially in the southeast, a part of the country where Indians were routinely enslaved a century ago.
The Tabasco state prosecutors' office said the boy's aunt, Maria Diaz Diaz, said she had brought Manuel to Villahermosa about 10 days earlier. She said the boy lives with his grandparents in the Tzotzil Indian village of San Juan Chamula, in neighboring Chiapas state, and wanted to work during his summer vacation to raise money for school supplies in the fall. Mexican children get free textbooks, but often have to buy their own pencils, paper and uniforms.
Tabasco state Gov. Arturo Nunez announced Thursday his administration would give Manuel and his family "a scholarship, as well as all medical and psychological help for the boy."
Lupita Santiago, a spokeswoman for the Chiapas state child welfare agency, said Manuel speaks only limited Spanish. His age is listed as 10, but in rural communities like his hometown births are often not registered until much later.
They boy, who appears short for his age, had returned to his village following the incident, apparently fearing retaliation by Villahermosa officials.
"The boy is doing well," Santiago noted. He didn't suffer physical harassment, but it was harassment."
The child welfare agency is also providing the boy "all necessary help," she said.
The Tabasco state prosecutors' office said Friday it had detained another municipal employee who participated in the incident and is investigating both workers on suspicion of abuse of authority and theft.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/27/mexico-street-vendor-video_n_3664448.html [the YouTube, as embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYKNrxUdhKQ ; with comments]
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A Cash Lure Cast From the Temple
By ALAN COWELL
Published: July 29, 2013
LONDON — As the scriptures tell it, Jesus expelled the money changers from the temple to cleanse it of a “den of thieves.” With some discernible echoes, the newly appointed archbishop of Canterbury has initiated a comparable crusade against newer financiers charging enormous interest on what are called payday loans.
Unlike the biblical showdown, though, the outcome of this newest confrontation seems freighted with moral ambiguity, risk and potential ridicule.
The archbishop, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, made news last week by declaring what headline writers called war on Wonga, one of the biggest high-interest lenders whose name is derived from a slang term for money. His aim, the cleric said, was quite literally to drive the company out of business by throwing the church’s support behind small-loan institutions like credit unions with much lower interest rates. (Payday loans are short-term, unsecured loans for relatively small amounts — usually as much as £1,000, or $1500 — to be repaid from the borrower’s next paycheck.)
“The Lend is Nigh,” The Sun tabloid declared in wordplay on evangelical billboards foretelling Armageddon.
But, no sooner had the archbishop girded himself in his mantle against Mammon than the Church of England was forced to admit that the managers of its £5.5 billion portfolio had invested some £75,000 in a private equity group linked to, yes, Wonga.
“It’s very embarrassing,” the archbishop said, discussing an array of awkward issues about the church, its investment practices and the question of whether the distinction between good and evil could ever be relative, particularly for a body that casts itself as a font of moral authority.
“We can’t say that we tolerate bad things,” the archbishop said in a BBC interview. “But you’ve got to live in the real world, and living in the real world means life is often very complicated, and you can’t escape the complexity.”
The matter of payday loans had initially seemed clear-cut.
As the archbishop recounted in a magazine interview, when he met the Wonga boss Errol Damelin, he told him “quite bluntly: We are not in the business of trying to legislate you out of existence; we’re trying to compete you out of existence.”
Fighting talk, indeed. But that should not really have been a surprise.
Long before he took over this year as head of both the Church of England and the broader Anglican Communion of some 80 million souls, Archbishop Welby worked in an oil company as a financial executive — no stranger, thus, to hard-nosed business calls.
He is also a member of a parliamentary panel investigating the standards of Britain’s banking industry after the financial crisis of 2008 — no stranger either to the wiles of capitalism and the corrosive lure of lucre.
The archbishop’s aversion to payday loans has been shared by politicians of all stripes, although some analysts labeled the cleric’s ideas naïve, akin to what one critic called “Kumbayah capitalism.”
With tongue in cheek, the columnist Ally Fogg of The Guardian likened the archbishop’s Wonga warning to the tough-guy talk of the television mobster Tony Soprano.
“I was drawn to a reverie starring gangs of pepped-up curates descending upon Wonga shops with pool cues, systematically laying waste to fixtures and fittings, and then throwing a line to the terrified branch manager: ‘Hey, it’s nothing personal. It’s just competition — capisce?”’ Mr. Fogg wrote [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/25/justin-welby-tony-soprano-wonga-payday ].
The less ribald question was whether the Church of England should seek to become an active player, rather than a supposedly principled and ethical investor, in such sharp-elbowed and worldly markets.
After all, the scriptures enjoin Christians to render “unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Was the archbishop, in other words, crossing a line between the spiritual and the temporal; or was he, as an editorial in The Financial Times [ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f33b5b64-f532-11e2-b4f8-00144feabdc0.html ] put it, merely showing “how the church aspires to be a potent force for good?”
Even before the Wonga affair, the church’s investment principles seemed ambivalent, beset by what one analyst called “inconsistencies and absurdities.”
The church, for instance, may not invest in companies that make more than 3 percent of their profits from pornography or 10 percent from arms sales. For companies that profit from high-interest loans, the bar is set at 25 percent — a level the archbishop now says should be lowered.
Compared to the challenges facing Pope Francis over the scandals swirling around the Vatican Bank [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/world/europe/cleric-and-2-others-arrested-in-vatican-bank-investigation.html ], an Anglican dabble in small-loan lending might seem innocuous. But for the usually poor borrowers, the price of quick cash to be repaid in short order is often painful, particularly for those who default.
Annual interest rates frequently exceed 5,000 percent. Those who do not repay their loans on time find themselves enslaved by ever-mounting, unpayable debt.
The spread of such high-interest lending is one more token of the broadening gap between the very rich and the very poor in Britain as austerity measures pare away benefits payments while conventional banks show little readiness to lend, even to those with sound credit ratings. The authorities estimate that about seven million people use high-cost credit. The payday loan business is valued at some £2.2 billion a year.
The archbishop’s proposal is that the Church of England should make available qualified volunteers and some of its 16,000 premises across the land to strengthen the smaller and far less lucrative credit union business — even if that does seem to invite a new kind of moneymaker back into the temple.
“There is a totally inadequate range of choice for consumers in deprived areas,” Archbishop Welby said. “I’ve seen it. I’ve lived in these areas and worked in them. I’ve had staff who’ve been caught up in it and have had to be helped and have had their lives destroyed by it. This is something that really matters to me.”
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/world/europe/30iht-letter30.html
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
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