MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Pope acknowledges sufferings of Latam colonized peoples

Pope Benedict XVI has acknowledged the suffering of indigenous Latin Americans during European colonialisation in a move to control damage caused by remarks made during his recent trip to Brazil.

The Pope had said "Christianity was not imposed by a foreign culture," drawing a sharp reaction from leaders of indigenous groups to whom the remark smacked of revisionism. "Christ was the saviour [America's natives] silently yearned for," he had told Latin American bishops in the speech in the Marian shrine town of Aparecida. The 80-year-old Pope Benedict also called the resurgence of pre-Columbian religions "a step backward," offending native peoples as far away as Mexico. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez demanded an apology following Pope Benedict's trip, his first to the Americas since his election as pontiff two years ago. Apparently in response, the Pope has said during his weekly general audience that one cannot "ignore the suffering and the injustices inflicted by the colonisers on the indigenous populations, [whose] fundamental human rights were often trampled on". Pope Benedict's media-savvy predecessor John Paul II, during a 1992 visit to the Dominican Republic, asked for forgiveness from indigenous peoples for the suffering inflicted by Spanish colonisers.