Word: brazil
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Pope John Paul II was the first pontiff ever to visit Brazil, and he was hugely popular here. But each time he visited his adoring flock, he came in the knowledge that his Church was losing followers and influence at a frightening rate. Between 1980 and 2000, the proportion of Catholics in the world's largest Catholic country fell from...
...Still, on the eve of his successor's first trip to Brazil - Benedict XVI touches down in Sao Paulo on Wednesday for a five-day visit - there is some encouraging news for the Holy See. New figures show that the exodus of worshipers to Protestantism has stopped. Government census data show that in 2003 73.8% of Brazilians declared themselves Catholics, almost exactly the same number (73.9%) as three years earlier. The number of Protestants did rise to 17.9% from 16.2%, but those joining Protestant denominations, rather than disaffected Catholics, were unhappy followers of other religions or people who had previously...
...Neri identified two factors behind the slowdown: The stabilization of Brazil's economy after decades of boom and bust; and the adoption by local Catholic diocese of some of the methods that brought success to the Protestant denominations...
...where, if anything, investors are too willing to invest in developing countries," says Adam Lerrick, a former investment banker who teaches economics at Carnegie Mellon University. The World Bank's net lending has plummeted over the past few years, even as it keeps shopping loans to the likes of Brazil, Turkey, Russia and China, sometimes on hugely generous terms...
...likely that both the Pope and Bagnasco will continue to face criticism in Italy, where the Church-State rapport is a constant source of conflict. At least for Benedict, there is a four-day trip to Brazil beginning May 9, which might be a nice break from the rising tension at home. Naturally, though, there?s no guarantee that going abroad will be a honeymoon...