Word: braziller
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Visiting Brazil, a country in which doing something as simple as giving bread to a worker on strike can be a political act, Pope John Paul II last week did his work in the shadow of two Christs: the passive Christ who said, "My kingdom is not of this world," and the active Christ who called upon all mankind to "love thy neighbor as thyself...
Those were only two emotional events in a twelve-day, 9,000-mile journey with an exhausting itinerary that took the Pope all over Brazil, the world's largest Roman Catholic nation. The papal plane touched down at Brasilia, the futuristic capital of Brazil, where the Pope marked out one of his major themes by offering President Joao Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo a sermon on social justice. The tour's pitch rose in Belo Horizonte, the nation's third largest city. Youths cheered wildly and chanted, "The Pope is our king!" John Paul spoke movingly to them...
...Pope's warm gestures, the stately progress via Popemobile through city streets, the huge adoring crowds, the songs and symbolic gifts (among other things, a guitar, a coffee plant, a hard hat) are now routine in John Paul's travels. In Brazil, the familiar spectacle tended to blur the importance of the trip. The Pope's visit has notable significance for Brazil, where 80% of the 120 million people are at least nominally church members, and some 80,000 groups of believers, known as "base communities," operate mainly without priests. But in the perspective of history, John...
...distinction is far from clear between the strong social pressure that the Pope seems to endorse and the overt political action that he has forbidden. In Brazil, that line has become a razor's edge...
Brazilian Catholicism once lived all too cozily with dictators. After the military coup in 1964, the hierarchy rendered public thanks to God for the soldiers who "delivered us from Communist danger." But for a decade and more. Brazil's bishops have been known for their willingness to stand up to the regime in the name of Christian justice. As one priest says, "The government calls a bishop a Communist, but when we see people being exploited, we have to say this is contrary to the Gospel." The toll has been high -since 1968, by church count, 122 bishops, priests...