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The talk of the Catholic left can sometimes sound like a message from Radio Havana. The best-known of the continent's revolutionaries, Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara of Recife, argues that "either the church will ally itself with progressive forces that demand social justice for the enslaved masses, or it will perish for lack of insight and social dynamism." Father Juan Carlos Zaffaroni, the Sorbonne-educated son of a Uruguayan banker and a former worker-priest in a sugar refinery, insists that his only moral course is to support violence and revolution. "It is a problem of identifying with the oppressed, of realizing the reality in which we live. And the reality of Uruguay is violence." To Father Francisco de Araujo, a Dominican prior in Sao Paulo, "Anybody who is not subversive nowadays does not merit the name of Brazilian."
Before Trent. In general, the priests of Brazil and Uruguay are the continent's most outspoken radicals, those of Argentina and Colombia the most conservative. Surprisingly, about 40% of the bishops in Latin America, mostly younger men, sympathize in whole or part with a theology of revolution. The signers of last year's "Message of the Bishops of the Third World," which endorsed revolution and socialism, included ten Latin Americans. A working paper to be presented to a conference of Latin America's bishops, which will follow the Eucharistic Congress, asserts that the answer to the region's problems "does not lie in a choice between the status quo and change, but rather between violent change and peaceful change."
Nevertheless, the majority of the most influential prelates are unbending conservatives in politics as well as in church affairs. Colombia's Cardinal Concha typically forbade any requiem Masses for Camilo Torres on the ground that he died "in mortal sin." Two Argentine bishops, Adolfo Tortola of Parana and Francisco Vicentin of Corrientes, are described even by some of their fellow clerics as "preconciliar—the council in question being that of Trent." In Porto Alegre, Brazil, Archbishop Vicente Scherer broadcasts weekly radio homilies warning against "anarchists and followers of Communism" within the church.
Markedly Communist. In several countries, conservative bishops get strong backing from well-organized laymen's groups. One such active organization in Brazil and Argentina is the Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property. Reacting to the "markedly Communist spirit" of reforms proposed by one Brazilian priest, "T.F.P.," as the organization is called, easily collected half a million signatures for a letter demanding that he be expelled from the Recife Institute of Theology.
The ease with which T.F.P. collected the signatures reflects the fact that a majority of Latinos either approve or at least tolerate Catholic conservatism. Out of ignorance, apathy and even superstition, most peasants and members of the unsophisticated small middle class are willing to accept the church in its present form. Where necessary, the government often steps in to bolster the Catholic conservatives. In Guatemala, two American Maryknoll priest-brothers, Fathers Thomas and Arthur Melville (TIME, Feb. 2) and Sister Marian Peter Bradford* were unceremoniously booted out of the country for their support of Castroite guerrillas.