Pope says indigenous peoples yearned for Christ

Last week, Pope Benedict XVI apologized to those who were offended by his remark in Brazil earlier this month when he said "Christ was the savior [America's natives] silently yearned for."

As many know, the evangelizing Spaniards and Portuguese Catholics who came to the New World were responsible for the destruction of two Native American empires, the Aztec and the Inca. With the conquest of these civilizations, millions of Native Americans died from violence, starvation and disease.

But Benedict's so-called apology (he didn't use the words apology or forgiveness) was ambiguous. He said that it was impossible to "ignore the suffering and the injustices inflicted by the colonizers on the indigenous populations, [whose] fundamental human rights were often trampled on," reported the Mercosur news agency.

What Benedict perhaps failed to note was that the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for dividing the New World between the Spanish and the Portuguese with the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas. This document granted Portugal rights to all land east of the 40th meridian, including Africa and Brazil and everything west, the rest of Latin America and the Philippines, to the Spanish. Of course, the Spaniards and Portuguese had to pay for their divine rights, but the Catholic Church was happy to oblige settling their dispute for the fee.

Benedict, whose history might be excusable because of his upbringing in Nazi Germany under Hitler, also proclaimed during his stay in Brazil that "Christianity was not imposed by a foreign culture," leaving many to wonder how it was possible for such a high-ranking world figure to make such a ludicrous and offensive statement.

Paulo Suess, an adviser to Brazil's Indian Missionary Council, was quoted by the International Herald Tribune as saying Benedict "is a good theologian, but it seems he missed some history classes."

Benedict has had a difficult time settling into the position of pope over the past two years. The German pope was chosen to lead the Catholic Church despite the presence of several non-European candidates in an era when Catholicism is largely on the rise in Africa as well as other parts of the third world.

Following his election, Benedict raised tensions between Western faiths when he visited Auschwitz, the largest Nazi death camp, neglected to mention that Jews had been murdered there and claimed that responsibility for the Holocaust lay only with a small group of criminals. Later, the pope raised tensions across the Muslim world when he cited a Byzantine emperor's criticism of the Prophet Mohammed without clarifying his own position in opposition to such a view.

Sure, it's possible that Benedict has made mistakes simply by accident. Nevertheless, the frequency with which Benedict has offended large portions of the Earth's population is disturbing.

The world changes very quickly today. It might be alright to call someone Indian one year, Native American another but indigenous later on. Benedict needs to accustom himself to life in a volatile world in which ethnic, religious and class status greatly affect human identity. No one wants to be offended, least of all by an old white man who thinks he's holier than thou.