Pope Benedict calls on Latin Americans to stand by church (Extra)

May 13, 2007, 0:15 GMT

Aparecida do Norte, Brazil - Pope Benedict XVI called Saturday on Latin Americans to maintain their 'sense of belonging to the church,' on the eve of the opening of a crucial conference of the region's bishops in Brazil.

'In the Catholic Church we find all that is good, all that gives grounds for security and consolation,' the pope said in Spanish, in a speech delivered mostly in Portuguese.

The pontiff spoke before religious people, deacons and seminarians gathered to greet him in the cathedral of Aparecida, the largest pilgrimage site in Latin America, 160 kilometres east of Sao Paulo.

The speech was heard in the pews and outside the cathedral by some 35,000 people, many of whom had waited more than 24 hours to get a chance to pray the rosary with Benedict.

Benedict's five-day pastoral visit to Brazil, the most populous Roman Catholic country in the world, is set to end Sunday, after he opens the Fifth General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The gathering is expected to address the growing exodus of the region's Roman Catholics, mainly to Pentecostal Protestant churches that are expanding rapidly throughout Latin America.

'Anyone who accepts Christ, 'the way, the truth and the life,' in his totality, is assured of peace and happiness, in this life and in the next,' Benedict said. 'It is worth being faithful, it is worth persevering in our faith.'

After praying the rosary with the enthusiastic audience, he exhorted in Portuguese for greater efforts to evangelize.

Benedict invited Catholics 'to become profoundly missionary and to bring the good news of the gospel to every point of the compass in Latin America and in the world.'

In an atmosphere reminiscent of football games, he was acclaimed by religious people who shouted his name in Portuguese - 'Bento, Bento!' - to a tune similar to that used by fans of the popular club Flamengo to cheer on their team.

The pope's reference to evangelization was evidence of the Catholic Church's preoccupation with the exodus of faithful in Brazil and across Latin America, which holds nearly half of the world's estimated 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.

The proportion of Pentecostals in Brazil has risen from 6.6 per cent in 1980, when the late pope John Paul II first travelled to the country, to close to 17.3 per cent in 2003, according to a recent estimate.

In turn, the proportion of Catholics in Brazil is thought to have fallen from more 90 per cent to 73 per cent, with some estimates falling as low as 64 per cent.