Pope Francis Can Expect Warm Welcome and Tough Questions in South America

The Guardian
July 3, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/pope-francis-south-america-paraguay

The pope’s visit to Ecuador and Bolivia shows his commitment to addressing poverty, but where will he stand on Paraguay’s 10-year-old rape victim case?

Pedestrians are reflected in a shop window which shows an image of Pope Francis in La Paz, Bolivia. Photograph: David Mercado/Reuters

Pope Francis is expected to be confronted by a host of thorny issues when he touches down in Quito, Ecuador on Sunday to begin a seven-day tour of South America, including a contentious case involving a 10-year-old rape victim in Paraguay who has been refused access to an abortion.

The pope is sure to be asked by the Holy See’s traveling press corp to weigh in on the case – which has been condemned by human rights experts - as well as other issues that he has not spoken publicly about, such as the supreme court decision this month that legalised gay marriage across the US.

The popular Argentinean pontiff will be greeted like a rock star during his tour of Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay. The trip is being seen as a triumphal homecoming of sorts for the pope, who is making his first return to the region since his visit to Brazil in 2013. That trip, in which Francis visited poverty-stricken favelas, was originally planned for his predecessor, Pope Benedict.

But the current tour was orchestrated by Francis himself. Experts say the choice of countries – and the decision to skip a visit to his home of Argentina – underscores the pope’s interest in shining a light on poverty and avoid being seen as playing favourites.

The trip represents an opportunity for the pope to highlight the plight of the poor in the developing world. It also presents a chance for Francis to make a pitch for those who have strayed from the church in favour of evangelical movements and secularism. Last year, a report by the Pew Research Center found that the proportion of Latin America that is Catholic had dropped 25% since 1970.

“It’s a trip that falls in quite well with the papacy in the sense that he will be going to three countries with strong indigenous culture and a strong element of popular religiosity , which are two areas that Pope Francis empathises with,” says Jimmy Burns, a papal biographer.

He added that Francis is likely to find a less hostile environment among the leftist and populist political leaders in Ecuador and Bolivia than his conservative German predecessor might have.

“Before Francis came on the scene, the populist governments were on a collision course with Catholic church. With Francis, both Evo Morales [of Bolivia] and Rafael Correa [of Ecuador] have been forced to reach out to the Catholic church and make amends, so the church will find a less conflicting environment than Benedict might have found,” says Burns, who notes that he experienced a real “change in the mood music” on a trip to Bolivia last year in terms of the attitude toward the church.

In Paraguay, Francis will face a wholly different political climate. Relations between Francis’s Vatican and the local church in Paraguay were complicated after Francis sacked a local bishop in 2014 who was accused of covering up for sexual abuse of one of his priests. At the time, the departure of Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano was blamed on “serious pastoral reasons” – and not a sex abuse cover-up – and the bishop claimed that his dismissal was a case of “ideological persecution” because of his opposition to liberation theology, a leftist Catholic theology that emphasises care and activism on behalf of the poor.

The other big question in Paraguay is how Francis will respond to a controversy surrounding the 10-year-old rape victim, who was denied an abortion after allegedly being raped by her step-father and despite the pleas of her mother for a medical intervention. The case has enraged pro-choice activists in Paraguay and abroad, and sparked a national debate about child abuse and the handling of underage pregnancies. Although some UN experts have declared the girl’s life to be in danger because of the pregnancy, few expect the Catholic country’s laws to change.

In the eye of the media storm the archbishop of Asuncion used a service marking 204 years of independence on 14 May to reject UN recommendations on the case, railing against “barbarism, dehumanisation, and a culture of death”.

Camila Zavala, the treasurer of lesbian advocacy organization Aireana, said the case reflected the traditional view of women in an intensely conservative culture.

“In Paraguay, the place of the woman is very bad: she’s almost completely without rights, and has to do what the man says,” she said. “The majority of cases the victimiser is from the victim’s own family. And the church endorses and shields this through its traditional teaching that says that women are subservient to men.”

Zavala said data analysed by her organisation found that there were about 600 pregnancies amid 10- to 14-year-olds in Paraguay every year.

The Catholic church opposes abortion in virtually all cases, but there is a debate among theologians about these kinds of situations, where the life of the mother is deemed to be at risk.

The pope will also experience a significant first in Paraguay: a public meeting with a married gay activist, Simon Cazal, the executive director of the Paraguyan LGBT rights group SomosGay, who said he was invited to attend a roundtable discussion with the pope.

While Cazal was reportedly shocked and encouraged by the invitation, not everyone shares the excitement. Zavala from Aireana laments the ongoing “interference” of the church in national politics and says the LGBT community still faces disadvantages in Paraguay, where President Horatio Cartes once famously said he would rather “shoot myself in the balls than have a gay son”.

Zavala doubts that the meeting with the gay activist will lead to a breakthrough, not least because he will be “one of 3,000 people in the stadium” with Francis.

“If the Pope were to say something about equal marriage or LGBT rights, it would be a welcome step, because the current ruling clique of the church’s beliefs are unthinkable. God says love your neighbor, let him be. But it’s a lie that he’s more progressive than others,” said Zavala.

The trip to South America is likely to make Francis a bit homesick, especially when he is so close – yet far – from Argentina, which he is due to visit on a separate trip next year.

From the beginning of his papacy, Francis had made it clear he would steer clear of Argentina until after this year’s presidential elections on 25 October, when the successor of current President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will be chosen.

Fernandez will step down on 10 December.

The two have developed an amicable relationship since his election, but there was bad blood between them when Francis was still known as Father Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires and a fierce critic of corruption in Argentinian politics.

The icy relationship worsened after Fernandez passed a law legalisiing same-sex marriage in Argentina in 2010 when Bergoglio headed a march against the gay marriage bill.

“Pity there is no ‘popess’, if not, I could compete for the post,” Fernandez said when she heard that Bergoglio had become pope.

Since then, relations have seemingly warmed and Fernandez has become a frequent visitor at the Vatican.

“I have to say that sometimes I feel used by the politics of my country, by Argentinian politicians seeking audiences,” Francis revealed in an interview with the Mexican television channel Televisa in March this year.