Good Neighbors & Religion

One of the touchiest religious subjects of the time last week finally came out in the open. Said Newsman John W. White in the December Catholic Digest:

"South America is hastily putting up its immigration bars to prevent the entrance of the hundreds of North American Protestant missionaries who have fled from Japan and the Orient. . . . Seven of the ten South American republics [all except Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela] are not permitting any new missionaries to enter their territory. . . . Protestant missionaries always have been considered 'undesirable' in all the South American countries. . . ."

In answer to Newsman White, Protestant mission leaders last week pointed out that no Latin American country bars Protestant missionaries as such, that through the years they have had less trouble with Latin American governments than with the authorities in any other parts. Some South-American countries have clamped down on missionary immigrants for the good reason that a flock of Axis agents had gotten by in that guise. Furthermore, the overzealousness of some Protestant sects, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, has caused real embarrassment.

Of the 123,000,000 people who live between the Rio Grande and Tierra del Fuego, about 2,000,000 are Protestants, served by 2,500 ordained nationals and 2,000-odd missionaries (1,500 of them from the U.S.). Nearly all the other 121,000,000 are claimed by the Roman Catholics. So U.S. Protestants expect trouble. But they have no intention of withdrawing. The Federal Council of Churches is all for mission work in Latin America.

Meanwhile Maryknoll, the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (TIME, March 30), announced last week that at the Vatican's behest it is sending 100 U.S. priests, many of them missionaries just back from the Orient, to Latin America. Said the Maryknoll release: "Latin America suffers from a tremendous scarcity of clergy. In the needy sectors to which the American priests are to go, many communities have not had Mass for ten years and more."

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