In recent days following Pope Benedict XVI's appearance in Aparecida, Brazil the Fifth General Conference of Latin-American Bishops, there has been criticism for the Holy Father's statements. Particularly, the Holy Father has been criticised for his words on the evangelization of Native Peoples:
As the blogger at Hallowedground stated with the above image, "Somebody should have told this Priest."
Photo Source: Father John J. Brown, first full-blooded Blackfoot Indian to become a priest of the Roman Catholic church, 1948
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...what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. It also meant that they received, in the waters of Baptism, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption; moreover, they received the Holy Spirit who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that the incarnate Word had planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Gospel. In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture. Authentic cultures are not closed in upon themselves, nor are they set in stone at a particular point in history, but they are open, or better still, they are seeking an encounter with other cultures, hoping to reach universality through encounter and dialogue with other ways of life and with elements that can lead to a new synthesis, in which the diversity of expressions is always respected as well as the diversity of their particular cultural embodiment.He has been sharply criticized for his statements from the heresy-plagued Indigenous Missionary Council. Father Paulo Suess told the Reuters news service that the Pope’s statement “was wrong and indefensible.” See Rorate Caeli for additional details.
As the blogger at Hallowedground stated with the above image, "Somebody should have told this Priest."
Photo Source: Father John J. Brown, first full-blooded Blackfoot Indian to become a priest of the Roman Catholic church, 1948