He had warm rapport with people, but church lost ground

02:37 PM MST on Sunday, April 3, 2005

By LENNOX SAMUELS / The Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY – When Pope John Paul II last visited Mexico, in the summer of 2002, adoring crowds thronged the streets in this, the capital city of one of the world's most Catholic countries.

Erich Schelgel / DMN Mourners gathered at a statue of Pope John Paul II in Mexico City after hearing of his death Saturday.

A few weeks ago, when the pope's condition worsened sharply, Mexicans and the faithful throughout Latin America flocked to churches to pray for his recovery.

Among Mexicans and other Latin Americans, John Paul II was one of the most popular pontiffs ever. And the affection seemed mutual: The pope visited Latin America 17 times, beginning with his first trip in 1979, to the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas and Mexico.

But some analysts say the pope leaves a somewhat shrunken church in Latin America, where there has been a significant defection by Catholics to evangelical Christian congregations.

"This pope was beloved here in Mexico," said pollster Dan Lund, president of Mund Americas. "First, he proclaimed himself a disciple of Mary and the Virgin of Guadalupe, which right there is a special link with Mexico."

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of the Americas.

"And then he was also a tireless beatifier around the world – and a whole bunch of people were beatified in Mexico and Latin America," added Mr. Lund.

In July 2002, John Paul II canonized Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, the first indigenous Mexican to be made a saint.

In January 1998, he made a historic visit to Fidel Castro's Cuba, where he famously declared that "Cuba must open to the world, and the world must open to Cuba." John Paul biographer Tad Szulc said the pope energized and emboldened the Cuban church. The pontiff "paved the way for legitimizing the Cuban dissidents," he wrote in the journal America.

But the pope's relationship with the region's faithful was not always smooth. John Paul took a dim view of any efforts to liberalize church doctrine on abortion, sexuality, euthanasia and other issues.

In the 1980s, he strove to limit the influence of liberation theology, a reform movement developed in South America that sought to align the Catholic Church with popular struggles for justice. The pope maintained that the church was clearly committed to fighting injustice, but he was not interested in associating it with any political or socioeconomic movement.

"You are not social directors, political leaders or functionaries of a temporal power," he said in Mexico in 1979.

Further, John Paul II alienated many Zapatistas, the Indian rebel group in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Many Chiapas Indian residents had hoped for his support in their efforts to gain land and economic and political power.

In 1993, the Vatican came close to removing Chiapas Bishop Samuel Ruiz, an advocate of the autóctona, or native church, who promoted the "church of the poor." The Zapatistas rose up on Jan. 1, 1994, led by Subcomandante Marcos.

Bishop Ruiz was appointed by the progressive Pope John XXIII. The bishop's retirement in 1999 marked the nadir of liberation theology in Mexico, where it had flourished in the 1960s and '70s.

Church leaders said John Paul II supported the notion of empowering the poor, but the longtime anti-communist was uncomfortable with liberation theology's links with Marxism.

Some analysts said John Paul II became less popular in the region as time wore on. The pope's trips steadily lost importance, said Elio Masferrer, a religion expert at the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.

"In 1979, he mobilized 20 million people," he said. "In his following visits, fewer people went out to see him. His last trip was quite laid back. He was very effective in the '80s and early '90s. But history caught up to him."

In the last two decades, Latin America has seen a marked increase in the number of Protestants, especially evangelicals.

In Mexico, which has more Catholics than any country except Brazil, just less than 80 percent of Mexicans identify themselves as Catholics, compared with some 90 percent a decade ago. About 10 percent say they are Protestants; 10 percent, secular; and about 1 percent, "other" according to a January 2005 national poll by Mund Americas. Thirty-five percent said they regularly attend Mass.

The drop-off is even more dramatic in parts of a region where essentially 100 percent of the people once identified themselves as Catholic. In El Salvador, estimates are that 60 percent of people call themselves Catholic, 30 percent evangelical and 10 percent secular.

Mr. Lund, the pollster, said many people in Mexico revered the pope but may quietly have disagreed with his doctrines.

"If you look at his other initiatives such as [against] abortion, we have people in Mexico who are more pro-choice than people are in the U.S.," he said.

"He was beloved here, but he was not a moral authority on specific strictures, such as choice."

Staff writer Brendan M. Case in Mexico City contributed to this report.