Religion: Weighing Words

Compromise at Puebla

Behind the gray stone walls of Palafox Seminary in Puebla, Mexico, 184 bishops of the third Latin American Bishops' Conference (CELAM III) spent 18 days weighing words like poker chips in a high-risk game. At stake was the future of 300 million Roman Catholics, across a continent plagued by poverty and oppression. Would the bishops be swayed by the progressives in their midst and come out in favor of church activism for the coming decades? Or would they take a conservative line and retreat from tactics that threatened confrontation with repressive...