Sandro Magister Highlights Papal Theme for Brazil and Beyond

Italian Sandro Magister is one of the world's most insightful commentators on the Church. His comments from Tuesday on the Pope's recent trip to Brazil address an important theme of the Holy Father's message to South America that also has resonance for the Church in general. Below are a few highlights. Click here for the whole article and text of the speech in question.

ROMA, May 15, 2007 – Among the twelve speeches, homilies, messages, and greetings pronounced by Benedict XVI during his four-day trip to Brazil, the one most keenly awaited was the inaugural address for the fifth conference of the bishops' conference of Latin American and the Caribbean, in Aparecida.

But the discourse that will be remembered in the future as the one most revealing of the pope's objectives was another. It was the one he delivered to the bishops of Brazil in the cathedral of Sao Paolo, at the end of Vespers on Friday, May 11.

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All of the instructions that the pope gave to the Brazilian bishops following the address descend from this foundation. Benedict XVI's clear intention is that of reestablishing Jesus, true God and true man, as the center of the Latin American Church: a Church that, in his judgment, has in recent decades strayed too far into political territory, under the influence of liberation theology.