Pope Benedict had barely left the site of the Fifth General Conference of Latin-American Bishops at Aparecida, Brazil, when the criticism from pseudo-Catholic leaders began. In his Opening Address, the Pope recalled how the miracle of the evangelization of the Americas purified indigenous cultures:
...what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. It also meant that they received, in the waters of Baptism, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption; moreover, they received the Holy Spirit who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that the incarnate Word had planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Gospel. In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture. Authentic cultures are not closed in upon themselves, nor are they set in stone at a particular point in history, but they are open, or better still, they are seeking an encounter with other cultures, hoping to reach universality through encounter and dialogue with other ways of life and with elements that can lead to a new synthesis, in which the diversity of expressions is always respected as well as the diversity of their particular cultural embodiment.
That is quite true, and it applies to the Quechuas and the Guaranis as it did to the ancient Saxons and Franks centuries before them. Naturally, defending that Christ has purified the native cultures of the Americas is ideologically unacceptable today, as a priest who is the "Theological Consultant" of the heresy-filled Cimi (Indigenous Missionary Council, which is a secretariat of the Brazilian Episcopal Conference), made clear in this Reuters news release(in French):
In 1992, John Paul II had officially spoken of wrongdoings committed in the process of evangelization of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
His successor has not only shocked the Indian populations by his words this Sunday, but they have also stupefied numerous priests who work close to those populations, says Sandro Tuxa, who leads a movement of tribes in the northeast of the country [Brazil]
"We condemn the Pope's words," said Tuxa. "To say that the cultural decimation of our people constitutes an act of purification is shocking and, frankly, alarming." "I believe that the Pope was ill-adviced".
The very Church-based group of support to the local indigenous populations, known under the name of Cimi, has also distanced itself from the Pope's words.
"The Pope has not understood the reality of the situation of Indians here. His words are erroneous and indefensible," Father Paulo Suess, a leader of the Cimi, told Reuters. "I myself am upset."
The Pope had strong words for people like Father Suess, who is a "peritus" at the CELAM conference, advising the president of the Cimi, Bishop Erwin Kräutler, and his ilk inside organizations like the Cimi, who wish to re-Paganize the native peoples of the Americas:
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: indeed, it would be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history anchored in the past.
