“Arrogant and disrespectful. We’re deeply offended”. The Brazilian indigenous population reacted in this way to the ideas expressed by Benedict XVI in his inaugural speech to the Episcopal Conference of Latin American Bishops, where he went over the history of relations between the Church and the population that has always lived on this land. “The pope was very arrogant and his words don’t correspond to the truth”, said Gesinaldo Sateré Mawé, director of an umbrella group of Amazonian native groups. From Ratisbona to Auschwitz and San Paolo, Pope Benedict continues to cause controversy.

The incriminated speech. Benedict XVI told the Episcopalian meeting: “But what did accepting the Christian faith mean for Latin American and Caribbean countries? For them it meant getting to know and accepting Christ, the God who was unknown to their ancestors, who without knowing it they were looking for in their rich religious traditions. Christ was the Saviour they were silently longing for. It also meant receiving, with the baptism water, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption, receiving the Holy Spirit who came and fecundated their culture, purifying and developing the numerous germs and seeds that the Word made flesh put in them, pointing them in the direction of the Gospels. The proclamations of Jesus and his gospels did not, at any time, lead to an alienation of the pre-Columbian culture”.

"How can you say such a thing?", the indigenous natives asked, since millions of their ancestors were exterminated when the European colonisers arrived. “The history of man”, Mawé pointed out, “shows that religious conversion was a strategy of colonisation that decimated many indigenous populations”.

 

Pope Wojtyla. It was for this very reason that the Church of John Paul II, who celebrated the date of 12 October 1492 as the “arrival of the Gospel in the New World”, asked for forgiveness for the terrible injustices that the inhabitants of Central and South America suffered in the name of Jesus during the colonisation period. “The descendents of the men and women who lived on this continent when Christ’s cross was planted on 12 October 1492 occupy a special place in the heart and in the affections of the pope”, John Paul II declared on 12 October 1992 in a speech in Santa Domingo on the occasion of the V centenary of the conversion of the New World. “How could the Church, whose priests and bishops have always supported the indigenous natives, forget, on this V Centenary, the enormous suffering inflicted on the inhabitants of this continent during the time of the Conquest and colonisation? We must recognise in all sincerity the abuses committed as a result of the lack of love on the part of people who did not know how to see their brothers, children of the same God, in those natives”. The State used the Church to do its dirty work”, Dionito José de Souza, head of the Makuxi tribe from Roraima, commented, “but John Paul II asked for forgiveness here. Why is the present pope making the Church of Rome turn back on its word?” ”We reject the pope’s words”, declared Sandro Tuxa, the head of the north-east tribal movement. “To say that the decimation of our people was a purification is offensive and, quite frankly, frightening”.

 

Pope Ratzinger. In truth, Benedict XVI followed very closely the line of John Paul II’s speech, but he made no reference to the “enormous suffering” of the natives, thereby provoking a completely opposite reaction from the one given to his predecessor. Pope Ratzinger said: “The Word of God, made flesh in Jesus Christ, also made history and culture. The utopia of returning to pre-Columbian religions, separating from Christ and the universal Church, would not be progress but would be a step backwards. In reality, it would represent regression to a historical moment anchored in the past. The wisdom of the original population fortunately lead them to create a synthesis between their culture and the Christian faith the missionaries offered them. This was the birth of the rich, deep popular religiosity in which the spirit of the Latin American population appears. This religiosity is also expressed in devotion to the saints, with their patronal feast days, in love for the pope and the other shepherds, in love of the universal Church as the great family of God that cannot and must not ever leave its children alone or in misery. All of this is part of the great mosaic of popular religiosity that is the precious treasure of the Catholic Church in Latin America, and which it must protect, promote and, when necessary, also purify”.

Words that ignored both the historical truth and the position of John Paul II, not to mention the letter that was written to Benedict XVI for his visit by representatives of Brazilian indigenous natives. The welcoming letter asked for support and help in defence of their land and their culture, that reminded the pope of the “slow genocide” that began with the Europeans and which the indios are still subject to. A document that if nothing else was a request for help that evidently remains unanswered.