MEXICO CITY (By Hugh Dellios and Gary Marx, Chicago Tribune) April 12, 2005 - A poor housewife from rural Chiapas, Angela San Martin considers herself a die-hard Roman Catholic, just like her parents. She swears she would never leave the church.

The temptations are always there, however, such as when evangelical Protestant missionaries knock on her door "up to 10 times" and try to convert her, they say, to "a religion that helps you and understands people's lives."

"There are many people in Chiapas who have switched," said the shoemaker's wife, 54. "They grab the desperate ones."

Keeping worshipers like San Martin in the pews and proving that the church can help relieve stubborn poverty are among the enormous challenges facing Pope John Paul II's successor in Latin America. It is home to nearly half of the world's 1billion Roman Catholics, but it also suffers from a shortage of priests, thinning congregations and a widespread flouting of the church's more conservative teachings.

From Brazil to Guatemala, church officials are alarmed at the persistent loss of parishioners to Protestant denominations offering more lively worship services and attention to earthly concerns.

The evangelicals' gains have underscored criticism of the Catholic Church as rigid, remote and at times irrelevant to modern lifestyles and challenges.

Despite John Paul II's great popularity in a region he visited 17 times, the church's uncertain future has given rise to a widespread hope that the next pope will be a Latin American who understands the local economic injustices and other challenges.

At least five cardinals from the hemisphere have been mentioned as possible candidates when their colleagues meet at a Vatican conclave beginning April 18. They include Brazil's Claudio Hummes, 70; Honduras' Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, 62, and Mexico City's Norberto Rivera Carrera, 62.

Other cardinals mentioned as papabili are Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 68, of Buenos Aires, and Dario Castrillon Hoyos, 75, of Bogota, Colombia. Many of the Latin cardinals are conservative on doctrinal issues but also are advocates of the poor and critics of free-market excesses, as was John Paul II.

If one of these were elected to the Holy See, it would mean that Latin America, long seen as a stepchild of its European colonizers, had achieved a new measure of prestige--much as John Paul II's election brought Eastern Europe new respect in 1978.

But it would also highlight the region's poverty and other unique issues--severe challenges that often were overlooked amid the clamor surrounding European and North American controversies such as women's roles and issues of sex and reproduction.

Much as John Paul II came uniquely qualified to address communism after living in its shadow, a Latin American would be able to address a long history of battles over land and money, now manifesting itself in frustrations over free-market economies and a widening gap between rich and poor.

"I think, in general, European [clergy] do not understand the issues of poverty as well as somebody from the Third World," said Rev. Edward Cleary, director of Latin American Studies at Providence College in Rhode Island. "The style is different. The Latin American bishops are closer to the people."

While the Roman church may be growing faster in Africa, many Latin Americans now consider themselves the dynamic center of world Catholicism and therefore believe they deserve a pope who will make their concerns the church's priority.

"The majority of Catholics in the world are in Latin America, so whoever is elected should focus on this continent," Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez of the Dominican Republic said before departing for Rome last week.

Pope John Paul II left a split legacy in the region. He was widely loved and appreciated for his many visits, his ability to speak Spanish and such gestures as honoring indigenous people in Mexico in 2002 by making a saint of the peasant Juan Diego.

But many Latin Americans took his conservative teachings as recommendations rather than commands, especially on such issues as birth control and divorce.

From the church's arrival in the New World with the conquistadors until well into the 20th Century, the institution and its leaders were often deeply entangled with the region's political leadership and aristocracy, sometimes at the expense of the poor people who filled its pews.

Then in the 20th Century, as church social policy evolved, some theologians adopted a fusion of Marxism and Christianity that put the earthly struggle of rich and poor at the center of the faith.

It was known as "liberation theology," but John Paul II, who had lived in a Marxist state, had little patience for it. In a widely remembered lesson, he wagged his finger at and scolded Rev. Ernesto Cardenal for working with Nicaragua's Marxist Sandinista government in the 1980s.

Although John Paul II spoke often about the need for economic justice and spoke about the evils of the church's past alignment with wealth and power, the vehemence of his crackdown was seen by some as a familiar slap at the poor.

"The biggest challenge [for the church] is the enormous religious competition that exists, but . . . John Paul II had a big dose of the blame," said Bernardo Barranco, vice president of the Center of Religious Studies in Mexico.

The suppression of the left-wing priests "created a very big vacuum on the popular level, and that was the vacuum filled by the new religious movements," Barranco said.

At the same time, the church in Latin America faces variations on problems that challenge many other Catholics.

The priest shortage struck here earlier and much deeper than the shortages nibbling the United States, Canada and Europe. By some accounts, Mexico has only one priest for every 7,300 Catholics, while some Protestant denominations can offer one minister for every 233 worshipers.

In rural Chiapas, where Catholic-Protestant tensions have erupted in violence, local churches addressed the problem by having dialect-speaking deacons oversee parishes. The Vatican ordered the practice terminated two years ago.

Many people are hoping the practice can be restored under a new pope.

Another critical decision is whether to allow married clergy. Cleary said it was especially important among the indigenous, who sometimes can't relate to someone who chooses not to marry or have children.

In Guatemala, it is believed that a quarter of the population describes itself as evangelical Protestants. The losses are also acute in places like Puerto Rico and Brazil, where migration to cities and the appeal of an African mysticism movement have carved into the Catholic population.

Elio Masferrer, a Mexican anthropologist who is chairman of the Latin American Religious Studies Association, criticized John Paul II for concentrating on great media displays instead of being down in the trenches helping people as do the evangelicals, who he said are more modern even if just as conservative.

"The issue isn't whether the new pope is Latin American or Australian. It's if the church is disposed to be innovative or not," he said, warning of "a catastrophe" in 10 years if it is not.

"Right now the ones on the offensive are the evangelicals," he said. "They are aggressively marketing and have people going house to house. They are out there, while the Catholics haven't abandoned their style as 'the official church.'"
 

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Argentina
 

Archbishop of Buenos Aires, 69, Cardinal since: 2001, Known for his humility, he travels by public transport
 

Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, Mexico
 

Archbishop of Mexico City, 62, Cardinal since: 1998, Conservative; critical of Mexico's corruption; may be too young
 

LATIN AMERICAN CHRISTIANS:
 

--Catholics:
 

1970: 251.8 million
 

2005: 483 million
 

PCT. CHG: +91.6 percent
 

--Protestants:
 

1970: 17.5 million
 

2005: 34.1 million
 

PCT. CHG: +96.0 percent