Brazil:It might seem incongruous to feel sorry for someone who once earned the nickname "God's Rottweiler".
But this week in Brazil, on the first great pastoral trip of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI deserves some sympathy as he undertakes perhaps one of the hardest jobs in modern times - following in the steps of that great leader, communicator and showman Pope John Paul II.
Since he stepped off the plane in São Paulo on Wednesday and, to the disappointment of many Brazilians, failed to kiss the ground in that simple but hugely symbolic gesture that his predecessor made his own, he has been compared to the man who held his job before him.
And if no one has been unkind enough to say he doesn't quite match up, the thought hangs unspoken in the air every time the television networks replay another clip of John Paul II joking with crowds on one of his four visits to Brazil, winning huge cheers with an aside delivered with all the comic timing of the consummate actor he was.
Of course John Paul II had some in-built advantages. He was the first pope to visit Brazil and in doing so became for many of the country's Catholics "our pope". All week people who have come out to see Pope Benedict have reminisced about previous papal visits; one man at yesterday's Mass in São Paulo saying he had returned to the exact same spot where he stood at the Mass John Paul II said 27 years ago.
Contrary to what Brazilians had been advised beforehand, Pope Benedict has addressed them in Portuguese, but his voice has none of the magnetism of John Paul II's rich baritone. No one openly called it an anti-climax, but his first address to the public - a crowd which waited for hours in the drizzle outside the monastery where he stayed while in São Paulo - lasted just four minutes and 97 words, which, as someone pointed out, is the equivalent of 2½ Hail Marys.
Onlookers have turned up to cheer on the pope wherever he has gone, but the crowds for the two showpiece events of the São Paulo leg of his trip were smaller than expected. Yesterday's Mass and canonisation of Brazil's first native-born saint was said by local media to have attracted up to 1½ million people. But on the ground it seemed well below that figure, with large parts of the airfield that had been set up to receive people holding sparsely spread groups of worshippers.
It has not been given as an excuse as such, but Brazilian commentators have been quick to remind people that despite looking younger than he is, Pope Benedict last month turned 80 and so is 20 years older than Pope John Paul II was when he made his first barnstorming trip of Brazil in 1980. It was also seen as appropriate that Pope Benedict stay in the Saint Benedict monastery because it houses one of Brazil's finest libraries, which would surely appeal to this quiet intellectual. President Lula probably touched on another issue for many Brazilians when he said on his return to Brasília that although the pope was "very German", he was much warmer than he seemed on TV and than he himself had expected.
There was also some unfortunate timing involved this week. Brazil's new health minister wants to re-examine the country's strict abortion laws. He says the fact that there are more than one million illegal abortions performed each year in backstreet clinics is of deep concern for public health officials. This drew the expected condemnation from the local church hierarchy in a war of words that erupted just as the pope was leaving the Vatican.
Pope Benedict arrived in the middle of this exchange, and although his message on abortion is the one the Vatican has given for decades, the local media headlines for the first few days revolved around the abortion dispute and the pope's views on it.
Another factor that John Paul II did not have to face was TV stations being less than reverential. The main station, Globo, has covered the trip enthusiastically, as might be expected of a "Catholic" network. But its nearest competitor, Record, is owned by the Universal Church of God's Kingdom, the biggest of Brazil's home-grown evangelical Protestant churches, and its coverage has been less extensive and more critical.
The rise of these evangelical churches is another important explanation as to why this trip to Brazil is different to that famous first one of 1980. One recent study found that from a near monopoly when Karol Wojtyla became pope, Catholicism is now the faith of less than three-quarters of Brazilians. Meanwhile, evangelical groups are closing in on making up a quarter of the population and are more heavily represented in big cities such as São Paulo.
How to face the evangelical challenge is an issue that will likely dominate the conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops that Pope Benedict will open tomorrow in the Marian shrine of Aparecida.
This will be the real business end of the trip and, perhaps to Pope Benedict, more important than the more public events that have so far failed to catch fire.
After all, for all the fervour and excitement Pope John Paul II generated on his visits, it was on his watch that Catholicism conceded so much ground to new evangelical Protestant churches.
Brazil's new saint: patron of builders and women in labour
Antonio de Sant'Anna Galvão, whom the pope canonised yesterday, lived between 1739 and 1822. He was born into an important family of Portuguese origin. He was ordained a Franciscan priest at the age of 23.
Appointed a confessor to a women's religious retreat in 1770, Friar Galvão constructed a new building for them, acting as an architect and a mason. It took 28 years to build what is now known as the Monastery of the Light and Church of the Light, now a UN world heritage site.
Friar Galvão is known as the Blessed Patron of Civil Construction and is also a guardian of women in labour. Many miracles and gifts are attributed to him, among them bilocation, telepathy, premonition and levitation.
He is widely known in Brazil for Friar Galvão 'pills', tiny pieces of paper with prayers written on them that people swallow when hoping for a miracle. Nuns in the Monastery of the Light make thousands of the 'pills' and distribute them free to the faithful.
He was beatified by Pope John Paul in 1998 after the Vatican officially recognised one of his miracles - the healing of a four-year-old girl considered by doctors to be incurable. She was cured after her family prayed to Friar Galvão and gave her the Friar Galvão 'pills'.
The second miracle required for sainthood was recognised last December. In 1999, a mother and child both survived after a high-risk birth. Vatican medical experts said the case was "scientifically inexplicable", attributing it to prayers to Friar Galvão and the 'pills'.
- (Reuters)