Venezuelan president demands papal apology for remarks on indigenous

Published: 2007-05-22

CARACAS, Venezuela (CNS) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has demanded that Pope Benedict XVI apologize for saying that Europeans did not impose Catholicism on native Americans. "As chief of state, I implore His Holiness to offer apologies to the peoples of our America," Chavez said in a mid-May broadcast over Venezuelan radio and television. "How can (the pope) go and say that they came -- when they came with rifles to evangelize -- that they came with no kind of imposition?" During his speech inaugurating the May 13-31 Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, Pope Benedict said Catholic missionaries' early evangelization was not "the imposition of a foreign culture" on the region's indigenous peoples, but led to "a synthesis between their cultures and the Christian faith." In recent years there has been renewed interest in traditional indigenous religions, particularly in Andean and Central American countries; an Indian theology movement of indigenous Catholic theologians also has arisen. In an apparent reference to more radical movements that promote a revival of indigenous religions, the pope warned that "the utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbian religions ... would be a step back."

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