Word: braziller
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Catholic prelates, long passive in the face of creeping Protestantism, are increasingly jittery about the threat. Brazil's bishops have debated plans to halt the worrisome defections. Guatemala's Archbishop Prospero Penados del Barrio issued a harsh letter charging that the U.S. government is boosting Evangelicalism to "help consolidate its economic and political power." Pope John Paul II believes the inroads of unnamed "sects" could become "disastrous." During last year's tour of Mexico, designed in part to counter Evangelicalism, the Pontiff directed clergy to abandon "timidity and diffidence" in combatting their rivals...
...Vatican is especially concerned about Brazil, supposedly the world's No. 1 Roman Catholic nation, with 126 million on church rolls. Barely a tenth of those registered Catholics are regular churchgoers. This means that, astonishingly, there are almost certainly more Brazilian Protestants in church on Sundays than Catholics. Protestants boast a minimum of 20 million churchgoers and are expanding twice as fast as the overall population...
...commitments to Jesus and strict adherence to the Bible). The spectacular Protestant growth since the 1960s has occurred largely in Pentecostal groups that combine biblical orthodoxy with an innovative stress on emotionalism and miracles. Another worrisome challenge to Catholicism comes from African-rooted spirit cults, which are strong in Brazil and are spreading into Argentina. Since the 1960s, Catholicism has tolerated observance of these popular non-Christian rites by masses of nominal Catholics, while Evangelical converts (many of them baptized Catholics) militantly oppose spirit cults and the intermingling of faiths...
Combative hostility toward competing faiths characterizes Brazil's fastest- growing Pentecostal group, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Its authoritarian bishop, Edir Macedo de Bezerra, 45, began preaching in 1977 to a dozen curiosity seekers in a rented room above a funeral parlor; today his flock is 2 million strong. The movement filled a 150,000-seat Rio stadium twice last year, opens one new church a week, and has added a $45 million Sao Paulo TV channel to its 14 radio stations...
...outside Paris a new city is rising on 8 sq. mi. of formerly vacant land. Once Euro Disney Resort opens for business in 1992, forget the Eiffel Tower, the Swiss Alps and the Sistine Chapel: it is expected to be the biggest tourist attraction in all of Europe. In Brazil as many as 70% of the songs played on the radio each night are in English. In Bombay's thriving theater district, Neil Simon's plays are among the most popular. Last spring a half-dozen American authors were on the Italian best-seller list. So far this year, American...