Latin Amer: Church Talks of Renewed "Option for the Poor"

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Latin Amer: Church Talks of Renewed "Option for the Poor"

 

Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit

 

InterPress Service - Jul 16, 2007

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38554

 

LATIN AMERICA: Catholic Church Renews 'Option for the Poor'

 

By Patricia Grogg

 

HAVANA, Jul 16 (IPS) - The Roman Catholic Church plans to undertake

concrete projects in the next four years to help overcome poverty in

Latin America, the region with the most glaring income inequalities in

the world.

 

"The option for the poor is one of the challenges we have in the

region," Monsignor Raymundo Damasceno Assis, archbishop of the

Brazilian city of Aparecida and the new president of the Latin American

Episcopal Council (CELAM), told IPS.

 

"It is above all up to Christian lay people to unite to overcome the

structures of injustice in our countries, so that we may all have

better living conditions," he added at the close of the first CELAM

General Assembly to be held in Cuba.

 

The latest statistics from the Economic Commission for Latin America

and the Caribbean (ECLAC) indicate that 205 million people live below

the poverty line in this region, of whom 79 million are indigent

(extremely poor).

 

Coinciding with this Assembly, which brought together 50 bishops from

all over the region, Pope Benedict XVI authorised the release of the

Aparecida document, approved by the bishops' conference held in May in

the Brazilian city of the same name.

 

In the Aparecida document, the bishops urge every local church to

strengthen the Social Pastorates, so that their presence might be felt

in the midst of "the new realities of exclusion and marginalisation

experienced by the most vulnerable groups."

 

Globalisation, the bishops say, has led to the emergence of "new faces

of the poor" and excluded, among whom they mention immigrants, victims

of violence, human trafficking and kidnappings, displaced persons and

refugees, the "disappeared," people with HIV/AIDS, those who live on

city streets, miners and landless peasants.

 

"The Church's Social Pastorate must welcome and support these excluded

people wherever they are," the Latin American ecclesiastical hierarchy

said in Aparecida. In the face of today's globalisation that favours

wealth accumulation and promotes inequity and injustice, the Church

proposes another, characterised by justice, solidarity and respect for

human rights, they said.

 

The 136-page document, divided in three sections and 10 chapters, gives

an overview of the regional situation and expresses particular concern

about problems such as drug addiction and drug trafficking, violence

which mainly targets the poorest sectors and raises crime indices, and

the dual marginalisation experienced by low-income women, indigenous

people and Afro-descendants.

 

The "preferential option for the poor" is the basis of Liberation

Theology, whose proponents' involvement in the struggles of the poor

and marginalised sectors of the Latin American population often brought

them into conflict with a more conservative Catholic Church hierarchy

in the past.

 

Damasceno Assis said that at the Havana meeting recommendations were

made and tasks were distributed among CELAM officials, who will meet

again in Bogot! in August to draw up concrete projects to flesh out the

strategy approved in Aparecida for the next four years.

 

He also announced that the 32nd Ordinary Assembly of CELAM will take

place in Managua in 2009.

 

The Jul. 10-13 meeting in Havana was hailed as historic, because it was

held for the first time in Cuba. The bishops met with Cuban

authorities, including vice-presidents Carlos Lage and Esteban Lazo,

and asked them for facilities for thousands of young Latin Americans

studying in Cuba to practice their religion and access spiritual help.

 

"They told us that this dialogue will continue, and that they are open

to support these requests," the archbishop of Aparecida said.

 

The Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), created in 1999, alone

receives 1,500 students annually, on Cuban government scholarships,

from 24 countries -- 19 within the region. Total student numbers are

between 10,000 and 12,000 students, studying different years of the

course.

 

Official sources said that at the meeting there was agreement about

"the need for the training given to Latin American professionals in

Cuba to continue potentiating human values and the conservation of

their beliefs, traditions and customs, so that they can return to their

communities of origin and serve those who are most in need."

 

One of ELAM's principles is to train professionals "to a high level of

scientific, humanist and ethical preparation and capacity for

solidarity, so that they will be able to act within their environment

to satisfy the needs of the region and contribute to sustainable human

development."

 

The Latin American bishops made no direct comment on at least three

letters received from internal dissident sectors in Cuba, requesting

that they mediate on behalf of prisoners and other humanitarian cases.

Instead they decided to hand these matters over to the local Catholic

Church.

 

"CELAM's presidency has put these matters into the hands of the Cuban

Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is the right body to dialogue

with the national authorities on the matters raised in these letters,"

said a note distributed to journalists at the end of a press conference.

 

Relations between the Catholic Church and the Cuban government, which

had been through tense times in the past, began to improve ever since

the preparations for the visit in January 1998 of Pope John Paul II,

who died in 2005.

 

Cuban curia sources have told IPS that the dialogue that was opened at

that time has been maintained to date, although the situation is not

idyllic, nor are all problems solved.

 

"There are steps still to be taken, but it cannot be said that

(relations) are bad. Our communication with the present head of the

Office of Religious Affairs, Caridad Diego, is fluent, and problems are

solved in a friendly manner," said Monsignor Carlos Manuel de C©spedes,

vicar general of Havana, in an interview with Enfoques, a publication

of the IPS news agency in Havana.

 

At the Havana meeting, CELAM also elected new officers: the first vice

president is Baltazar Porras Cardozo, archibishop of M©rida, Venezuela;

the second vice president is Andr©s Stanovnik, bishop of Reconquista,

Argentina. Emilio Aranguren Echeverra, bishop of Holgun, Cuba, is to

head the Financial Committee.

 

Vctor S!nchez Espinosa, auxiliary bishop of Mexico, was elected

general secretary of CELAM.

 

Founded in 1955, CELAM's administrative centre is in Bogot!. It

represents the 22 episcopal conferences of Latin America and the

Caribbean, and it re-elects its officers every four years. (END/2007)

 

 

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