The Pope went to town in Brazil

I caught some of EWTN‘s coverage of Pope Benedict’s address in Brazil today, and stopped what I was doing to look at the screen, captivated. ‘Wow’ I thought. He’s really taking it to them. The media are approaching Benedict’s remarks from their own angle, but what he says is what’s important. Here’s one angle:

His hour-long speech contained the lengthiest and most pointed remarks of the pope’s five-day visit, and it was meant as a guide to the region’s bishops as they begin a 19-day conference on the church’s future in the region.

At the top of their agenda will be halting the exodus of millions of Catholics from the church over the past two decades, a challenge the pope referred to while urging the bishops to fight “secularism, hedonism, indifferentism and proselytism by numerous sects.”

It was a really remarkable address, though trademark Joseph Ratzinger, the ‘gentle but firm shepherd’ who continues to astound his listeners.

Benedict’s most political remarks appeared to be aimed at the region’s new generation of leftist leaders, such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales, who’ve been accused of ruling autocratically.

“In Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in other regions,” the pope said, “there has been notable progress towards democracy, although there are grounds for concern in the face of authoritarian forms of government and regimes wedded to certain ideologies that we thought had been superseded, and which do not respond to the Christian vision of man and society as taught by the social doctrine of the church.”

Echoing the words of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, Benedict said “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.”

Like John Paul in Communist Poland, Benedict went into the heart of the socialist regimes that threaten personal and religious freedom under the guise of a political ideology, and he preached truth.

“The utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbus religions, separating them from Christ and from the universal church, would not be a step forward,” the pope said. “Indeed, it would be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history anchored in the past.”

The pope also tackled some issues dear to Latin American leftists who oppose the free market reforms of the 1990s.

While praising “the phenomenon of globalization” as a sign of people’s “profound aspiration towards unity,” Benedict warned that “it also undoubtedly brings with it the risk of vast monopolies and of treating profit as the supreme value.”

The pope assailed modern “ethical relativism” and “civil legislation opposed to marriage which, by supporting contraception and abortion, is threatening the future of peoples.”

The address was riveting. The reporting on it, however, is partial.

The German-born pope sparked a hemisphere-wide debate Wednesday when he told reporters that legislators who voted last month to legalize abortion in Mexico City deserved to be excommunicated.

No, he did not. Let’s get that straight.

But the elite media tend to pick up one Associated Press report and run with it, as CNN did with today’s address.

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

“This being a continent of baptized Christians, it is time to overcome the notable absence — in the political sphere, in the world of the media and in the universities — of the voices and initiatives of Catholic leaders with strong personalities and generous dedication, who are coherent in their ethical and religious convictions,” Benedict said.

No matter who’s framing the news coverage, look at the beauty of that language. We need strong and dedicated Catholic leaders, he says, who are coherent in their ethical and religious convictions. This really resonates with people hearing it, at least speaking for myself, because I was at this point fixed on the Pope on TV. And I was amazed at the strength his clarity has, because of the very absence of it in the politically charged culture. And not just in Latin America.

Pope Benedict is the conscience of our age.