Brazil Welcomes a Very Different Pope

Pope Benedict XVI's five-day visit to Brazil, his first as pontiff to the region that is home to half the world's Catholics, is chock-full of critical social and spiritual missions. But the 80-year-old pontiff's first challenge is much more mundane — coping with jet lag. And he may not be as practiced on that front as his globe-trotting predecessor: As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he had preferred to stay home in Rome. His last trans-Atlantic flight was in 1999.

Even as Pope, until now, Benedict has stayed relatively close to Rome, logging four outings in Western Europe, and a politically tense though not particularly far-flung November trip to Turkey. Indeed, the Pope has made the Church's challenges on its home continent — particularly Europe's growing secularism — the focus of his pontificate. Still, the pastoral needs of Latin America's approximately half-billion Catholics make it necessary for the not-so-frequent flyer to make the 12-hour flight across five time zones.

After touching down in Brazil on Wednesday, Benedict will have scarcely a moment to recuperate, facing a full schedule of encounters with the faithful, Church officials and local political authorities. Benedict will begin his five-day visit in the pulsating metropolis of Sao Paulo, moving on Friday to the town of Aparecida, home to the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, the country's patron saint, which hosts the Fifth gathering of Latin American and Caribbean bishops that the Pope has specifically come to inaugurate on Sunday.

The issues on the agenda of the Bishops' conference will also be those that guide Benedict's visit to Brazil — the shrinking of congregations in the face of the appeal of evangelical Protestant groups and also as a result of growing secularism, materialism, poverty and priest shortages. Says one Latin American-born veteran Vatican official: "The problems in Latin America aren't less grave than in Europe, they just manifest differently."

But as much as Catholic officials in Latin America are focused on the future of the Church in the region, the Pope's visit will naturally evokes memories of his predecessor. John Paul traveled 18 times to Latin America, including his very first trip, in 1979, which brought him to Pueblo, Mexico, for the third meeting of Latin American bishops. When the then 59-year-old Polish Pope traveled by open Popemobile from Mexico City to Pueblo, there were thick crowds gathered literally all along the entire 75-mile route. John Paul would later say the experience shaped his entire papacy. Benedict, of course, is a different kind of Pope, who came to the job as a 78-year-old with an academic's instincts. His somewhat more limited travels seem to touch, though not necessarily shape, him. His visit to Istanbul's Blue Mosque and joint prayer with a Turkish imam — in the midst of controversy over papal remarks about Islam — was the first sweeping gesture that recalled John Paul's approach.

In Brazil, there is a planned visit to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, and the Pope will no doubt talk about the region's staggering gap between the rich and poor. Some believe Benedict would benefit from another improvised public display amongst Brazil's emotive flock: a stop in a favela (shanty town) in Sao Paulo, or offering his papal ring at the Aparecida sanctuary. But Father Javier Magdaleno Cueva, a Mexican-born Vatican official, says the pontiff won't try to imitate John Paul. "Benedict is profoundly European. He doesn't have the same natural affinity with the Latin American approach to Catholicism as John Paul — and he knows it. Still, he too will be conquered by the welcome he receives."

Indeed, Vatican watchers are already wary of comparing Benedict to John Paul, and the current papacy has clearly begun to create its own narrative. The question, then, is what this elderly European scholar aims to do in the New World. The South American official in Rome says that Benedict's attempt to reaffirm the Church's historic role in Europe is itself a vital message for Latin American Catholics to hear. "The clarity of his discourses will be appreciated in Brazil. Catholicism is losing its identity there too," he said.

Jet lag aside — for Benedict appears to be in fine health — this trip may indeed raise the question of age, or better yet, aging. It has been said over the past century that Catholicism in Latin America was vibrant because it was relatively young. John Paul's own youth in the early years of his papacy sparked a love affair between the Pope and his flock from Mexico to Bolivia, Brazil and Chile — and a particular tenderness once he had grown old. Now, instead, St. Peter's chair is occupied by an aging man deeply rooted in the Old Continent — and he visits at a moment when Latin American Catholicism is confronting some of the difficulties of its own aging.

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