The Pope really put his foot in it yesterday when he said, basically, that Christianity was the best thing that ever happened to the indigenous peoples of South America, and... ... the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.He also went on to point out that the revival of old indigenous religious practices (the ones that don't involve cutting out the beating hearts of your captive enemies, naturally) in the north of Brazil is a "backward step."
They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were "silently longing" for Christianity, he said.
Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.
Just to give you an idea of how well all of this went over, even the Indian Advocacy Group of the Catholic church of Brazil came out saying, "The Pope doesn't understand the reality of the Indians here, his statement was wrong and indefensible."
Ouch. The Catholic Church giving the smackdown to the Pope? Very ouch.
4 comments:
Hey Jil - what was the name of the female artist / song you posted not too long ago - said it was perfect for a Sunday morning....I see it's been removed and I've been trying to find it, but I forgot the name of the singer / title of the song.
Thanks - love the blog- though I'm a tad bit jealous :)
Lily Allen, the song is called LDN.
p.s. Sorry I had to take down the YouTube videos. With Thailand blocking them, when my blog is loaded on a computer here in Thailand, it gets stuck on trying to load the video player, and some of the gizmos on the blog that are instructed to always load after everything else is loaded do not work.
Actually, since the videos are no longer on the main page, I've put them back up so you can watch them.
Go to "Archieves Sorted By Labels" and click on "Videos", and it will be there now.
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