Faced with secularisation and competition from the evangelicals, the Roman Catholic Church is investing in Brazil and Africa but betting most on Asia. Overview of the Vatican’s geopolitics.

It has become common to assert that Europe is no longer the centre of the Roman Catholic Church. That is true in terms of numbers. Latin America, led by Brazil, has long been the most Catholic continent in the world, while the numbers of the faithful are rising in Africa and Asia. However, one must be wary of this optical illusion: The decision-making centre remains anchored in Europe and the models of clerical training, ministering to the faithful, and evangelisation remain largely influenced by the heritage of European Catholicism. In other words, the body of the Roman Catholic Church has slipped south, but its head is still firmly rooted in the North.
Within the Roman Catholic Church, free-market globalisation is thus perceived, in light of its most negative effects, to be the vector of a secularisation that has led to the collapse of Catholic, and more generally Christian, influence in European societies. In this context, the Roman Catholic Church’s geopolitics rests upon the assertion, related to both identity and missionary action, of an alternative counter-culture, i.e., the promotion of Christian integral humanism in the face of the (moral and spiritual) relativism and (technical and mercantile) utilitarianism of a secularised globalisation. On this front, and especially since the advent of Pope John Paul II, the Roman Catholic Church has banked heavily on ecumenical dialogue with the other branches of Christianity and interreligious dialogue, especially with Islam, to forge a coalition of the major religions against the steamroller of secularisation.
This strategy is relayed by the diplomacy of the State of the Vatican, which does not hesitate to play the countries of the south, including Muslim ones, off against those of the North within various international institutions to defend traditional values (moral and family values) against the planetary spread of Western libertarian models (1). It does the same to support its denunciation of the injustices and social destructuring that are engendered by globalisation. However, the Roman Holy See also counts a great deal on the Catholic churches of the South, which have been affected less than those of the North by what Pope Benedict XVI calls “internal secularisation” (decline in regular church attendance and callings, detachment from traditional morality, and so on). The Vatican is keeping a very close watch over these still young “emerging churches”, for they represent a potential that could ultimately revitalise tired European and, more generally, Western Catholicism.

Brazil: the challenge from the evangelical churches
This is the general framework in which one can grasp better the Vatican’s position regarding the emerging powers such as Brazil, which is the most Catholic of the very Catholic Latin America. But for how much longer will this bulwark remain, given the seemingly irresistible thrust of the evangelical churches? On 8 January 2007 Pope Benedict XVI, as the head of a Church whose rank and file remained highly committed to social justice, voiced his satisfaction with Brazilian developments that, if consolidated, “…will be able to make a decisive contribution to overcoming the poverty that afflicts vast sectors of the population and to increasing the stability of institutions.” (2). However the pope then added, “Yet the practice of democracy must not be allowed to turn into the dictatorship of relativism, by proposing anthropological models incompatible with the nature and dignity of the human person", targeting several Latin American countries, including Brazil, that are planning to legalise homosexual unions, with these remarks. This development is all the more alarming in that it would undermine a strategy of moral reconquest based on the countries and Churches of the South.
Even though most of the evangelical churches remain very close to the Vatican’s moral positions, their expansion remains another major concern, especially as the haemorrhage seems to have left the Brazilian Catholic Church somewhat groggy: 67% of Brazilians are Roman Catholics today, down from 83% in 1991 (3). It estimates that it is losing 1% of its faithful to the evangelicals each year in a country that now allegedly has two pastors (usually evangelical ones) for each Catholic priest. To meet this challenge, the innovation has come from the rank and file, as is often the case, with the explosion of charismatic communities of which the “singing priest” Marcello Rossi, a preacher and healer who officiates in football stadiums and on television alike, is emblematic. However, these attempts to follow evangelical recipes probably will not check the erosion of Roman Catholicism in a country that has been won over by religious pluralism.
The absence of a true strategy on the part of the Brazilian Church, which remains a figurehead for Latin America’s Catholic churches, which are likewise grappling with the same problems, albeit to different degrees, is another cause for concern. In this exemplary Brazilian context, where, as on the rest of the continent, social problems are far and away the most burning issues, it will be interesting to see what guidelines will be adopted by the next General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate, which will take place at the Marian sanctuary of Nossa Senhora Aparecida (São Paulo State, Brazil), on 13-21 May 2007. It will be opened by Benedict XVI in person. However, it is said less often in the Vatican today that the Catholic Church’s future lies in Latin America.

The African hope
Can the Roman Catholic Church thus bank on Africa? To a certain extent, for Christianity is effectively advancing in Africa today, as well as in Asia. However, it is primarily Protestant and evangelical. Here, too, the outcomes of the consultation of the African episcopates (which runs until October 2008) in the run-up to the Synod of Bishops’ second Special Assembly for Africa, will have to be monitored. The Lineamenta or discussion document, entitled The Church in Africa in service to reconciliation, justice, and peace, purports to be looking to the future. However, it mainly asks questions, such as “Who will support the drastic changes in conduct which must come about to change Africa's destiny…?” or “How should the Gospel be proclaimed in an Africa marked by hatred, wars, and injustices?” (4).
On a strictly geopolitical level, the Holy See expects a lot from the Republic of South Africa, which Pope Benedict XVI recently recognised to be “one of the continent’s most influential countries”, urging it to “maintain a powerful voice within the International community”, especially as regards cancelling or reducing foreign debt, creating peace in the region, and helping the other nations to consolidate effective social and economic programmes (5). The South African Catholic Church, 80% of the followers of which are Black, continues to have a certain amount of weight in the country, despite being in the minority, because of its committed stance against apartheid. However, it has little influence over the other African Catholic Churches, which remain highly dependent on financial and human support from the rich churches of the North, especially when it comes to training their clergy. Paradoxically, the African churches are providing their northern counterparts with more and more priests although they are starting to lack priests at home, notably to withstand, there too, increasingly autonomous evangelical churches, the expansion of which nevertheless continues to be supported by the North American evangelical missions. The balance of power in this area is no longer in favour of the Roman Catholic Church (6).

Asian Christianity and modernity
Evangelical proselytising has spread to Asia, including to India and China, with the same success. Christianity in Asia, especially in the Far East (South Korea and Singapore), has a very positive image, especially among the middle classes, who associate it with Western modernity and prosperity. This is also the case of the “cultural Christians” in China, who are often intellectuals for whom Christianity is synonymous with democracy. The Vatican is in a serious dispute with this Asian giant, which is home to some 12 million Catholics (compared with 30 to 60 million Protestants), over the Chinese regime’s trampling on religious freedom. The context – US pressure and the showcase of the 2008 Olympic Games – is in Rome’s favour. To ensure Catholicism’s survival in China, the Holy See is said to be ready to make an agreement, in the form of a concordat (7), that would also enable it to complete the union of the two branches of Catholicism in China, namely, the official one, which is controlled by the Chinese authorities but is ageing and rather tradition, and the “underground” branch, which is younger but more attracted by the ecclesial dynamism of the evangelical groups.
Like China, India was rebuked once again by Pope Benedict XVI on last 8 January about constraints on religious freedom, although the latter is guaranteed by its Constitution. This concerned Hindu extremists’ exactions on Christians, sometimes ending in death, and the “anti-conversion laws” that several Indian states have adopted, even though Christians are a tiny minority in India, accounting for only 2.5% of the population. The bulk of its followers effectively come from those who are excluded by the caste system, mainly Dalits (“untouchables”), and tribal ethnic minorities. However, it is much more solidly implanted and influential than in China. This is true of the Catholic Church (some 15 million members, or 1.8%of the population), which manages a large number of very effective educational (from primary to university level) and healthcare institutions.
The attention that the Vatican is paying to developments in India is more understandable in light of this young Church’s local resources, for it is also endowed with solid institutions (the most important ones after those of the Philippines, which is the most Catholic country in Asia) for training priests, monks, and nuns, the numbers of which are rising fastest in the Roman Catholic Church. For example, a quarter of today’s Jesuit callings come from India, where the Church also has three missionary institutes, turned primarily towards Asia. This emerging Church is thus considered to have the greatest potential for growth in the Roman Catholic Church, even though, like all the Asian churches, it still has little influence on the Catholic transnational’s management. Attention must nevertheless be called to the far-from-token arrival of Monsignor Ivan Dias, Archbishop of Bombay, at the head of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples. Pope John Paul II had indeed predicted that, for the Roman Catholic Church, the 21st century would be that of Asia.
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(1) For more on this, the reader is referred to Géopolitique du christianisme, edited by Blandine Chélini-Pont and Raphaël Liogier, Ellipses, 2003.
(2) New Year’s address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See. (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2007/january/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20070108_diplomatic-corps_en.html)
(3) See "Panorama religieux du Brésil", an overview by the Brazilian episcopate, Documentation catholique, No. 2338, 19 June 2005.
(4) La Documentation catholique, No. 2365, 1 October 2006. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20060627_ii-assembly-africa_en.html
(5) Speech to South Africa’s new ambassador to the Holy See, 1 December 2005.
(6) Two-thirds of the world’s Christian missionaries today are Protestants, for the most part evangelical Protestants.
(7) However, China and the Vatican still do not have official diplomatic relations.