ABOUT 40% of the world’s Roman Catholics live in Latin America and 123m of them in Brazil, more than in any other country. So it is doubly fitting that Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, should make his debut as a foreign traveller by spending a week in Brazil from July 22nd. The trip, to mark the church’s World Youth Day, was scheduled before the elevation of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, to the papacy. But it is likely to set the tone of his tenure in the Vatican.Unlike Pope Benedict, who spent most of his last visit to Brazil with bishops, Francis is due to meet young people, visit a hospital, attend two events on Copacabana beach and visit a favela in Rio de Janeiro that was until recently controlled by a drug gang. The new pope’s identification with ordinary people and shunning of Vatican luxury is likely to go down well in Brazil, which has recently seen big marches against political corruption and for better public services.
But in Brazil, as elsewhere, the church is in trouble. It is losing the faithful at an accelerating rate to myriad evangelical Protestant churches and to atheism (see chart). Its image has been...
via The Economist: The Americas http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21581991-promise-and-peril-papal-visit-earthly-concerns?fsrc=rss|ame
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