Collision in Latin America

For generations, the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America was identified with the rich and the few "good families" who controlled most countries. In the 1960s, Vatican II's pressures for social reform began to exert dramatic changes. Today, the Catholic clergy has been drawn into conflict with conservative regimes throughout Latin America--especially in Brazil and Paraguay.

As one result, progressive priests and laymen are being hounded in Brazil, the world's biggest nominally Catholic nation. Last week the Vatican issued an open warning to Brazil's military rulers. "We cannot remain deaf to the appeals of Christians who justly react against attacks and violations," said Maurice Cardinal Roy of Quebec, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace. He added: "Pope Paul is following the situation of the church in Brazil with vigilant attention."

Spiral of Violence. Cardinal Roy was commenting on a new report to the Vatican, compiled by 61 leading Roman Catholic laymen of Italy, France and Belgium. Their 33-page "black book," entitled Terror and Torture in Brazil, includes numerous accounts of police brutality--hanging prisoners by the hands, electric shocks to the breasts of women and genitals of men, solitary confinement in tiny cells for as long as 40 days.

An unnamed clergyman reports the arrest and torture of a devout young woman identified only as Tereza, presumably for activities in a Catholic youth group. She was raped repeatedly by policemen, he says. Three of her teen-age nephews, including a mentally retarded boy, were also beaten; a fourth nephew was forced to beat his aunt.

In the same report, Archbishop Helder Camara of Olinda and Recife in northeastern Brazil recounts the "barbarous assassination" of a 28-year-old priest. "What is particularly grave about this crime," he writes, "is the virtual certainty that it was part of a premeditated series." Last week the outspoken prelate visited Pope Paul in Rome to tell him personally about the "spiral of violence" in his country.

Marxist Priests. For months, Rome has heard similar reports. After surveying Brazil's 245 bishops, a special Vatican envoy found that only 15 firmly support the military regime, while 40 have joined Archbishop Camara in publicly opposing the government; most of the other 190 lean toward the left. Some bishops are heeding the growing number of rebel priests who insist that Catholicism can transform society--and save its soul--only by embracing revolution, even a Marxist variety. "We expected revolutionary movement, but never anticipated that it would build up to such intensity at the very heart of the church," says Msgr. Joseph Gremillion, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace. "We now find that Moscow Communists are farther to the right than many revolutionary Catholics."

In contrast to Brazil's leftist priests, Paraguay's twelve Roman Catholic bishops stand united in rejecting violence. Even so, they are equally united in openly defying President Alfredo Stroessner's dictatorship. They follow to the letter the statement of the 1968 Latin American Bishops' Conference in Medellin, Colombia, which urged conscientizacion, or "awakening of consciousness," among the populace.

In Paraguay, such preaching of human rights is an obvious threat to President Stroessner's power. Last October it led to a major crisis when police dispersing a student demonstration beat up participating priests and nuns. In retaliation the church excommunicated Interior Minister Saubino Augusto Montanaro, who heads the police, and took the unprecedented step of canceling a religious feast-day celebration.

Tyranny v. Suicide. The government counterattacked where it hurt most. More than 15% of Paraguay's 2,200,000 people receive U.S. surplus-food distributed by Caritas, the church's relief service. Striking at the church, the regime forbade Caritas to distribute such food in Paraguay, whether it comes from the U.S. or any other country. Instead, the government itself intends to handle the distribution--thus taking credit for helping the poor.

Brazil and Paraguay are not the only trouble spots--merely the most dramatic. The vast masses of Latin Americans remain apathetic, but the Catholic elite is deeply concerned. It is divided between those who want the church to lead in social and economic transformation and others who condemn priests "favorable to Communism." The Vatican is struggling to devise ways to survive head-on collision. "The church cannot countenance tyranny," says the Pontifical Commission's Msgr. Gremillion. At the same time, it cannot permit its own destruction. How to avoid that --yet to accommodate Catholics committed to radical change--is the dilemma that faces the church in a vast region that cries out for change.

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