They grabbed 24-year-old Adriana and bundled her into the car before speeding away. Lita never saw her daughter again.

It was the second time tragedy had befallen Boitano: a year earlier, in 1976, her 20-year old son, Michelangelo, had disappeared on his way home.

As many as 30,000 people are thought to have joined the ranks of Argentina's desaparecidos, the term used for political opponents of Argentina's 1976-83 dictatorship who were kidnapped, tortured for information and then made to vanish.

For Boitano, the loss of her two children not long after she was widowed in 1968 transformed her into an activist, a role she still plays today, at the age of 83.

"The strength to live came from our children - to search for them in the hope that they would be alive. Because I was left with nobody," she told the Guardian.

That search has taken her all the way inside the halls of the Vatican, where, she believes, meticulous files have been kept about the people who disappeared.

These files were principally collected through the papal nuncio's office in Buenos Aires at the time, where victims' families would file written complaints about the disappearances.

South America's bloody history with military dictatorship will return to the spotlight on Wednesday when Pope Francis touches down in Bolivia, where he is expected to pray at the site where the body of a Jesuit priest, Father Luís Espinal, was found in 1980 after he was kidnapped, tortured and killed by paramilitaries.

The murder was met with outrage and marked a turning point from the country's history of dictatorships to democracy.

"It was the beginning of the democracy that we continue having in Bolivia," Father Xavier Albo told the Catholic news site The Pilot, "with all the ups and downs that democracies have." Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian
• Image: Seychelles News Agency

This visit has a special meaning to South Americans because Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is a native of Argentina, and is the first Latin American pope in the history of the Catholic Church.

This will be the first official visit for Francis - a former Jesuit bishop - to Spanish-speaking South America since he was elected to lead the Catholic Church in 2013 after the resignation of Benedict XVI.

As millions of faithful Catholics prepare to welcome Pope Francis next week, here are key facts about his trip:

1 Latin America is home to more than 425 million Catholics - nearly 40% of the world's total Catholic population.

Moreover, in most South American countries, at least seven-in-ten adults identify as Catholic. Indeed, in only one Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking country in South America (Uruguay) do Catholics make up less than half of the adult population (42%).

2 South Americans have widely embraced Pope Francis, the first head of the Catholic Church elected from the New World.

Approximately two-thirds or more of adults in every South American country express a favorable opinion of Francis in a Pew Research Center survey, including 91% in his native Argentina.

Among South American Catholics, views on Francis are even more positive: At least 75% of Catholic respondents throughout the region have a favorable view. Moreover, majorities of Catholics in most South American countries say Francis represents a major force for change in the Catholic Church.

3 In contrast with the warm regard for the pontiff by people who currently say they are Catholic, the sizable number of people in the region who have left the church are cooler toward the pope.

Only in Argentina (73%) and Uruguay (63%) do clear majorities of former Catholics say they have a favorable opinion of the pope.

Elsewhere, no more than about half of former Catholics give the pope a positive rating, with favorable opinion especially low among ex-Catholics in Bolivia (28%) and Venezuela (32%). Continue reading

Sources

• Pew Research Center
• Image: The Guardian

Yet identification with Catholicism has declined throughout the region, according to a major new Pew Research Center survey that examines religious affiliations, beliefs and practices in 18 countries and one U.S. territory (Puerto Rico) across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Historical data suggest that for most of the 20th century, from 1900 through the 1960s, at least 90% of Latin America's population was Catholic (See History of Religious Change).

Today, the Pew Research survey shows, 69% of adults across the region identify as Catholic.

In nearly every country surveyed, the Catholic Church has experienced net losses from religious switching, as many Latin Americans have joined evangelical Protestant churches or rejected organized religion altogether.

For example, roughly one-in-four Nicaraguans, one-in-five Brazilians and one-in-seven Venezuelans are former Catholics.

Overall, 84% of Latin American adults report that they were raised Catholic, 15 percentage points more than currently identify as Catholic.

The pattern is reversed among Protestants and people who do not identify with any religion: While the Catholic Church has lost adherents through religious switching, both Protestant churches and the religiously unaffiliated population in the region have gained members.

Just one-in-ten Latin Americans (9%) were raised in Protestant churches, but nearly one-in-five (19%) now describe themselves as Protestants. And while only 4% of Latin Americans were raised without a religious affiliation, twice as many (8%) are unaffiliated today.

Much of the movement away from Catholicism and toward Protestantism in Latin America has occurred in the span of a single lifetime. Indeed, in most of the countries surveyed, at least a third of current Protestants were raised in the Catholic Church, and half or more say they were baptized as Catholics.

For example, nearly three-quarters of current Protestants in Colombia were raised Catholic, and 84% say they were baptized as Catholics. Continue reading

Sources

• PewResearch
• Image: CathNews USA

The Fides news service has published its annual document listing all the Church workers who lost their lives in a violent manner during the past year.

It says the majority of the pastoral workers killed in 2012 were victims of attempted robbery: Some discovered there were thieves in their homes and their bodies were found with signs of torture and cruelty. Others were attacked in the street and robbed of what they brought with them or their car.

Continue reading

Saint Peter Chanel might well be the Proto Martyr of Oceania, revered with affection in the Pacific and rightly so. But he also stepped on to the soil of South America when the first Marist Missionaries spent a rest time in Valparaiso, Chile, says Father Tony. But that is not the only reason why he is known, loved and revered in Peru and Venezuela in the places where for over fifty years the Marist Fathers have ministered.

Amidst the poverty and the growing violence of our times "Pedro Chanel" as he is known has become for the people here in "Barrio Paso Real" the "gentle, non-violent one" who could say as he meekly waited for the end "Death is good for me". On the 28^th of April 2011, as on that day every year, the people of the community of San Pedro Chanel , Paso Real, came to celebrate life, remembering their quiet patron, sang songs they had composed to him, prayed with him for his barrio burdened down by drugs, bullets, violent deaths and whose mothers like Mary stand at the foot of the Cross. Pedro's icon and relic were displayed before the altar and valued artifacts from Futuna were placed before him in his honour.

The Feast this year was within the octave of Easter and the coloured pastel materials like the Pacific lava-lava adorned the Cross, the lectern, the altar and Pedro's makeshift shrine. Christ has Risen alleluia, Pedro too lives on in his broken down chapel and out in his suffering barrio in between the high walls of the airport and the fields of sugar cane . Violence and revenge are not Pedro's way ."We sing Chanel" , they sing in Spanish,"Pedro Chanel, Mary's tender voice made a gracious choice in you".

The mural in the photo has Mary with the child Jesus, and St Peter Chanel is seated with the palm of martyrdom in his hand surrounded by children.

Source

• Tony O'Connor
• Image: Tony O'connor