Pope Benedict XVI wraps Brazil visit

Pope Benedict XVI wraps Brazil visit

Benedict also criticised Latin America's wide gap between rich and poor, warned that legalized contraception and abortion threatens ''the future of the peoples'' and said the region's historical Catholic identity was at risk.

Before boarding a plane for Rome on Sunday, the pope criticized both unfettered capitalism and the Marxist influences that have motivated some grassroots Catholic activists in Latin America.

''The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful destruction of the human spirit,'' he said in his opening address at a two-week bishops' conference in Brazil's holiest shrine city aimed at re-energizing the church in Latin America.

Effects of globalization

Benedict also warned of the effects of globalization, blamed by many in Latin America for a deep divide between the rich and poor.

The pope said it could give ''rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness.''

The pope did not name any countries in his criticism of capitalism and Marxism, but Latin America has become deeply divided in recent years amid a political tilt to the left.

It is with the election of leftist leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua and the re-election of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Center-left leaders govern in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

In remarks that could prove controversial on the final day of his five-day trip, Benedict said Latin American Indians had been ''silently longing'' to become Christians when Spanish and Portuguese conquerors took over their native lands centuries ago, though many Indians were enslaved and killed.

''In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture,'' he said.

Benedict, speaking in Spanish and Portuguese to the bishops in Brazil's holiest shrine city, said Latin America needs more dedicated Catholics in leadership positions in politics, at universities and in the media.

Religious experts said Benedict didn't address how to solve key church issues in Latin America, including a severe shortage of priests or a specific strategy for how parishes should try win back Catholics who have turned into born-again Protestants or simply stop going back to church.

While Brazil is home to more than 120 million of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics, the census shows that people calling themselves Catholics fell to 74 per cent in 2000 from 89 per cent in 1980.

Those calling themselves evangelical Protestants rose to 15 per cent from 7 per cent.

In events in and near Sao Paulo that attracted more than 1 million people, Benedict roundly the rising tide of Latin Americans flouting the church's prohibition on premarital sex and divorce and told drug dealers they will face divine justice for the bloodshed and misery they cause in Brazil.

Important treasure

Benedict called the institution of the family ''one of the most important treasures of Latin American countries,'' but said it is threatened by legislation and government policies contrary to church doctrine on marriage, contraception and abortion.

Mexico City lawmakers recently legalized abortion and gay civil unions, and the Brazilian government routinely hands out millions of free condoms to prevent AIDS.

The pope called the region the ''continent of hope'' during a Sunday Mass before 150,000 faithful in front of the mammoth basilica of Aparecida home to the nation's patron saint, a black Virgin Mary.