This week’s visit of Latin America’s first pontiff to his home continent is rich in symbolism, something at which Pope Francis has excelled since his election in March. However, in a series of public addresses and homilies over the next four days to the enormous crowds of pilgrims attending World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, he will also have a chance to begin giving a clearer indication of the direction in which the first pope from the “global south” intends to lead the Catholic Church.
More than 70 per cent of the world’s Catholics are now from Latin America, Africa and Asia and the election of the first pope from their ranks signals a change in an institution dominated for centuries by Europeans.
“This is the first pope from the global south. The cardinals made a strategic decision to cut their losses in a highly secularised Europe,” says Andrew Chesnut, the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at the Virginia Commonwealth University.
“But while the church is thriving in Africa and in many Asian countries, it is not in Latin America and I think the thinking within the conclave was, with 42 per cent of the world’s Catholics from Latin America, perhaps it is not too late for critical intervention there as it is in Europe.”
As an Argentinian, Pope Francis knows well the main challenge in Latin America is not – as in Europe and North America – from secularism.
Instead it is evangelical, mainly Pentecostal Protestant, churches that have experienced rapid growth across the region in recent decades consigning to history Rome’s near-monopoly on the region’s souls.
Indeed, as cardinal of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis made his reputation as a pastor who, allied with other cardinals in the region, spearheaded an evangelising campaign that sought to compete with the Pentecostals across Latin America.
This pastoral experience led him to push Argentina’s clergy into the slums where the evangelical sects were making most gains. It means he brings to the papacy a different set of priorities and skills than the anti-communism of John Paul II and the intellectual concern with Europe’s deepening secularism of Benedict.
This change, grounded in personal experience, can be seen in the new pope’s expressed desire for a “poor church for the poor”, embodied by his own personal simplicity that has won him millions of admirers.
It is a message that will resonate in a Latin America where, despite a decade’s progress, poverty and inequality remain entrenched.
"It is clear he is someone who has had direct contact with misery, who visited the slums of Buenos Aires and knows what human suffering is," says Leonardo Boff, a left- wing Brazilian theologian who left the priesthood after a clash with Pope Benedict when the latter was head of the Congregation of Faith.
"Everything must start with compassion and indignation. Without these sentiments, there can be no serious engagement in favour of the poor. This pope shows these sentiments."
This new emphasis on the global iniquities of poverty and attacks on capitalism, however, does not necessarily mean that Pope Francis is about to radically change Rome's doctrines on sexuality, of which he was a defender as cardinal and which are less questioned in the global south than in Europe and North America.
“Because of the fact he is a Latin America and the first Jesuit pope, and because of his personal emphasis on simplicity, Francis represents a historical break,” says Manuel A. Vasquez, author of several books on the Latin American Church.
“But there are a lot of continuities with John Paul II and Benedict and I think we should be careful not to overemphasise the differences.”
Instead, Vatican watchers say what is under way is a shift in emphasis.
"I expect a rebalancing of papal teaching which means stepping back from the very strong emphasis of the last 25 years on sexuality," says Massimo Faggioli, a historian of the Vatican.
“I think Francis realises this message has not just become divisive within Catholicism but has overshadowed all the church’s other teachings such as those on poverty and social justice.”
How Pope Francis plans to execute this rebalancing could become clearer by the end of the week.
