The decline of Catholics in Latin America continues unabated. It increased under Pope Francis.
(Rome) For decades, Latin America was considered a “continent of hope” for the Catholic Church. In fact, it is losing ground there day by day. The reasons are complex but partly homemade. At the 2013 conclave, a well-meaning section of the pope's electorate was convinced that the election of the Argentine to the throne of Peter would halt the process of erosion. This was suggested to them by interested parties. The reality looks not only sobering but devastating. The most visible “response” so far has been the Amazon Synod. Church leadership seriously believes that this is the solution. Meanwhile, Catholic Latin America continues to erode.
The election of Pope Francis was engineered by European cardinals who were not primarily concerned with Latin America, but with the West. Their program is that of the '68, which they want to push through in their own countries. To do this, they chose the detour via Latin America. The Amazon Synod was driven by the same agenda. There is talk of Indians and the rain forest on the equator, but the desired program is that of the ecclesiastical 68ers with the aim of pushing through their agenda somewhere outside the European horizon in order to then re-import it into the old Occident. This strategy follows a clear logic after the direct route was recognized as having failed.
The eroding process of the Church in Latin America as far as the part of the Church is concerned, goes back to the wrong course that was set by European missionaries on the Iberian-influenced subcontinent. This includes, above all, Marxism and its thought pattern. This is how Liberation Theology developed and other currents. They are accompanied by a latent or open hostility to Europe. A paradox? It seems so. In reality, it reflects a partly consciously, partly unconsciously intentional decomposition, as practiced in Europe. It is the rejection of one's own identity, carried out with gradually varying degrees of intensity, and thus radically or to some extent also of Christianity, in Europe as well as in Latin America.
The fact that the 500th anniversary of Christianization is partly "forgotten" is an alarming portent, after all, it was only then that civilization found its way onto the continent. In 1492 the discovery by Columbus, a man of deep Catholic character, was commemorated. However, the commemoration was overshadowed by polemical interference.
In 2019, the Mexican bishops extended an invitation to Pope Francis to come to Mexico for the 500th anniversary of the evangelization of mainland America. The first church on the American mainland was built in Tlaxcala in 1521 and dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi. However, Pope Francis showed no interest in traveling to the celebrations – and that had nothing to do with Corona, which then messed everything up a bit.
The Tlaxcaltecs could never be subdued by the cruel Aztecs. It is historically no coincidence that they allied themselves with the Spaniards and also quickly mixed with them through marriages. Together, the Spanish-Tlaxcaltec coalition defeated the Aztec Empire and ended its cruel cult of human sacrifice and cannibalism.
While the occasion was not sufficient for Pope Francis to travel to Latin America, Mexico's leftist leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, called for an apology from the Church to the "native peoples" (the term indigenous is used by political correctness is avoided) – for Christianization. However, the same Obrador considers Pope Francis to be “one of the finest popes” in Church history.
media and source
Telemundo, part of NBCUniversal ( USA), the third-largest media company in the world, and other media outlets, yesterday published reports on the decline of the Catholic Church in Latin America. The headline and tenor of Telemundo are exaggerated. No regrets can be expected from the authors. Rather, they indicate that the Church opposed abortion and euthanasia, but that its erosion entails socio-political changes. Thus, with the help of massive and planned pressure from the US and European NGOs, several states have legalized the killing of unborn children and "gay marriage". The same movement is also taking place toward the introduction of euthanasia.
The published figures come from Latinobarómetro and are certainly worth considering, albeit with a caveat. The market and opinion research institute based in Santiago de Chile is described by Wikipedia as an "independent private non-profit organization", but where it says "independent" today, independence is rarely to be found. Founder and Director Marta Lagos serve on the Chilean Board of Directors of Women's World Banking ( headquartered in New York), Advisor to the World Bank based in Washington, the United Nations Development Program UNDP based in New York, the Inter-American Development Bank Washington-based IADB and member of a UN Expert Committee on Public Opinion. The advisory board of Latinobarómetro includes a representative from Eurobarometer, a not at all "independent" institution of the EU Commission.
UNDP and IADB, the Ibero-American Summit OEI and the Development Bank of Latin America CAF, as well as the Norwegian and Swedish governments, are among Latinobarómetro's major donors.
The latest numbers
Latinobarómetro compares the development from 2000 to 2020 in ten-year steps. The number of Latin Americans who describe themselves as Catholic fell from 76 percent in 2000 to 70 percent in 2010 and 57 percent in 2020. This is double the decline compared to the previous decade.
In return, the Protestants and the non-religious have grown. The proportion of Protestants in Brazil grew from 13 percent (2000) to 25 percent (2020). If you add the proportion of those who waver, according to other institutes, the proportion of Protestants in the largest Latin American country is as high as 31 percent. In Guatemala, their share has even risen from 19 percent to 41 percent since 2000, while that of Catholics has fallen to 41 percent.
At the survey's launch in Mexico City on Wednesday, the only reason given for this development was that "young people now have a wider range of options to choose from," that Protestant groups have increased their recruitment; that New Age movements incorporate pre-Columbian traditions and that faith in the Catholic Church is at an all-time low.
Nevertheless, Catholicism continues to be influential because it is socially rooted in culture and folklore, "even among non-practicing people". This even applies to Uruguay, the least Catholic country in Latin America, where only 34 percent call themselves Catholics. Nevertheless, Catholic holidays are held, such as Holy Week, which has been called “Tourism Week” since 1919, when a law of strict separation of Church and state came into force.
Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image : Wikicommons/MiL
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG
