At Vatican's Doorstep, a Contest for Immigrant Souls

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/inter ... olics.html?

At Vatican's Doorstep, a Contest for Immigrant Souls


By DAVID GONZALEZ
Published: June 5, 2005

ROME - Carlos MejÃÂ*as is a Roman Catholic missionary in an unlikely setting - in this city of churches, a few miles from the Vatican's solemn majesty. He and other lay missionaries walk through bustling piazzas, noisy nightclubs and cramped apartments on the city's outskirts looking for Latin American immigrants who are sometimes as far from their faith as they are from their homelands.
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Jake Price for The New York Times

A lay leader, Carlos MejÃÂ*as, with younger immigrants. Nelly Cando, right, from Ecuador, said: "We need to be closer. ... We need unity."
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Jake Price for The New York Times

Latin Americans in Rome pose challenges to the Vatican to keep them in the fold. Colombians danced at Santa Lucia Church after evening Mass.

On a Saturday afternoon, Mr. MejÃÂ*as walked with two other missionaries down a sloping street that led to a run-down apartment complex ringed by luxury homes near the Piazza Azzarita. Walking past men who sipped beer and children who darted about the dingy terraces, they knocked on doors in hopes of persuading others to join them at a religious center they were about to open nearby.

Nelly Cando welcomed them into her brother's barely furnished apartment as she and a cousin sliced fruit for a modest party on their day off from working as domestics. They held hands in a small circle and prayed, for work, life and relatives in Ecuador.

"We need to be closer, to know each other and be neighbors," she said. "We all live here but don't know each other. We need unity."

If the Vatican is ever to re-evangelize Europe, it could start with the waves of immigrants living at its doorstep, many of whom are already baptized and who have a cultural kinship with the church. Rome's 50,000 Latin American immigrants are often poor and isolated, far from their homelands and from their memories of Catholicism as the center of spiritual and local life.

In these very ways, the Latin Americans in Rome are more and more like the half billion or so Catholics back in the Western Hemisphere. Both in Europe and Latin America, the church is trying to come up with a way to appeal to these nominal Catholics, and to keep them from the evangelical churches that are competing intensely to convert them.

Many in Latin America are waiting to see whether Pope Benedict XVI, who had a stern image as the church's chief enforcer of doctrine, will assume the mantle of pastor that his predecessor donned.

"What people are looking for in Latin America is for the church to have a human face," said the Rev. Mark Francis, superior general of the Viatorian religious order. "It's that Latino idea of being in communion with someone you can identify with. It should not be a big surprise that people are looking for personal outreach, beginning with the pope, but especially with local priests."

Many Catholics in Latin America cite poverty as the foremost problem facing the church. In countries where free market policies and globalization have yet to lift the poorest out of despair, people are looking for a defender.

Dean Brackley, a professor of theology and ethics at the Jesuit University in San Salvador, said he hoped Pope Benedict would continue his predecessor's strong defense of the poor in Latin America. Though John Paul reined in liberation theology across much of Latin America and Benedict - as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - denounced it as essentially Marxist, John Paul did agree with many of the social and economic justice beliefs from that movement.

"The great struggle in the church is whether the victims of poverty - which is the majority of the human race - are at the center of our picture of the world and our ministry," Father Brackley said. "That is our great concern in Latin America. Are they central or are we only talking about saving souls in general?"

The region's lingering poverty sets many off on journeys that take them from country villages to urban centers and beyond. That unchecked growth of urban ghettos in Latin capitals leads to concentrations of desperately poor people who have hardly any connection to one another.

That social dislocation, in turn, has helped Evangelical groups to grow rapidly, as they eagerly welcome newcomers who have lived in silent alienation.

A similar phenomenon is happening in Rome, with Evangelicals seeking out Latin American immigrants who feel cut off from their faith. In some cases, people feel unwelcome in Catholic churches because they are divorced or have had children out of wedlock. In other cases, they are longing for more than a Mass celebrated hastily by a priest from Spain who returns to the sacristy immediately after the final benediction.

The Rev. Luis Ernesto Ayala BenÃÂ*tez, a Salvadoran priest who is studying at the Gregorian University, said the church needed to learn how to build true community beyond the hours of Mass, whether here or back home.

"One reason why people go to the Protestant churches is they feel a warmer welcome there," he said. "It's not that people are looking for God, but looking for each other. They leave service feeling better, not necessarily because of the doctrine."

The lingering question is whether Pope Benedict, an intellectual who tends to doctrinal orthodoxy, will encourage expressions of faith and culture that would appeal to Latin Americans.

"I believe sometimes our discourse in church is too intellectual and rational," said the Rev. Orlando Torres, a Jesuit from Puerto Rico who is in charge of religious education and spiritual development for the order. "We need to recover a vision of God that has not just reason, but feeling."

Catholics are trying hard to serve the immigrants here, and provide a warm and helpful atmosphere. But the demands of surviving in Rome makes every outreach difficult.

The biggest movement to build a community of worshipers is led by the Rev. Antonio Guidolin, a member of the Scalabrinian missionary order who founded a Rome mission in 2002. The group runs 18 centers for Latin American immigrants, helping them with work, clothing, food and spiritual outreach.

Some 100 lay volunteers go out each week seeking immigrants who have fallen away from their faith. A smaller group of priests - many from the same nations as the immigrants - celebrates Mass for their countrymen.

"It is important for them to see a Salvadoran priest," said Father Ayala BenÃÂ*tez. "I knew the reality of why they migrate here. It is easier to be in solidarity with them."

Yet the demands of work and the stress of being in a foreign culture take a toll on many immigrants, and often keep them from church. At a recent meeting of the priests involved in the Rome mission, there were laments that immigrants were sometimes more interested in having the church get them a job than in saving their souls. And often, many of them lived far from the Rome parish where the missionary group offered a variety of social services.

Father Antonio, normally an impish ball of energy, grew quiet when he considered all the difficulties in building a community even here, so close to the seat of Catholicism.

"To be a missionary today, we have to travel within the church and the world," he said during a meeting of priests. "If we are not missionaries, what kind of Christians are we? What message are we taking to the world?"

During a recent visit to immigrants who lived on the outskirts of the city, Jorge Guerra, a seminarian from Mexico, wondered how many of the people he encountered were nominally Catholic. In his experience, he said, many Latin Americans drew close to the faith around Holy Week or on patron saint feast days.

"We need an internal dialogue to revive these people," he said. "Latin America has faith, but it has to grow, to mature. We have to go forward and live the faith and turn it into a social commitment."

Yet sometimes, the feast day is the best way, and perhaps the only way, to bring people together.

The next Sunday, Mr. Guerra went to Santa Lucia Church to join some 100 immigrants from Colombia on the feast of that country's patron, Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Chiquinquirá. The Rev. Héctor Aya, a Scalabrinian priest, wore a stole emblazoned with flags of the Spanish-speaking world.

He echoed Pope Benedict's message at his installation Mass. "Remember," he said. "We are not alone in Italy."

A short procession left the church after Mass, as the worshipers returned to a concrete playground where they ate empanadas and danced, all under the serene gaze of their patroness. Father Aya took off his vestments, revealing a soccer shirt in the Colombian national colors. Slowly, people slipped off into the stream of scooters, cars and pedestrians scurrying past.