Ahead of Leo XIV’s visit to Uruguay, Cardinal Sturla of Montevideo speaks of great anticipation, the poor Borro district and a message of joy and hope.
The post Leo XIV in Uruguay. Cardinal Sturla: “He will bring a message of joy and hope that our society badly needs” first appeared on AgenSIR.On Friday 6 November Leo XIV will set foot in the Americas for the first time as Pope, and he will do so in the continent’s most secularised country, one that “officially” has neither Christmas nor Holy Week: small Uruguay, home to some three and a half million people, half of whom live in the metropolitan area of the capital, Montevideo. Just over 2.75 million people are baptised (76%), yet recent surveys suggest that far fewer describe themselves as Catholic. Equipos Consultores puts the figure at just 36% of the population, while according to Latinobarómetro around half of Uruguayans profess no religion at all. If the country is secular, its institutions are even more so, shaped by the 1918 Constitution, which separated Church and State in a way unmatched anywhere else in the world. In Uruguay, Christmas is officially Family Day and Holy Week is Tourism Week. Despite this historical legacy, relations with the institutions are good today, and the Pope will be received with full honours by President Yamandú Orsi at Carrasco airport.
The Pope will spend less than 48 hours in Uruguay, with Montevideo as his base throughout. On Saturday 7 November he will travel to Paysandú, the country’s third-largest city and an important economic centre in the north, and on Sunday 8 November to Florida, where he will celebrate Mass. Florida is where Uruguay’s independence was declared in 1825, and it is home to the shrine of the Virgin of the Thirty-Three, the country’s patroness. The afternoon and evening of Saturday 7 November will be taken up by a packed programme in the capital, with visits to the outlying neighbourhood of Borro, in Casavalle, and to the Catholic University, before the prayer vigil at the Centenario stadium.
(Photo: Archdiocese of Montevideo)
With Leo XIV’s arrival imminent, SIR spoke to Cardinal Daniel Fernando Sturla Berhouet, archbishop of Montevideo and vice-president of the Episcopal Conference of Uruguay.
Your Eminence, how have the Church in Uruguay, and the Church in Montevideo in particular, prepared for Pope Leo XIV’s visit?
The Church in Uruguay has been preparing for a long time for this visit, which we have been awaiting with great longing, because for several years we had hoped that Pope Francis would come to see us. Well, now it will be Pope Leo who comes.
We have prepared in many ways: through catechesis, by preparing our communities and, of course, through all the organisation of the visit itself. We have also worked hard to raise the funds needed to cover what welcoming the Pope, and wanting to do it as well as possible, costs our Church, which is a poor Church. There have also been a number of initiatives, in the press, through lectures, with the publication of a few books and in promoting the Pope’s encyclical Magnifica humanitas, so we really are preparing very well.
Uruguay is known as the most secularised country in Latin America. Even so, is there anticipation and enthusiasm about the Pope’s arrival? Can you give us some examples?
Yes,
there is great anticipation.
In Montevideo the sense of expectation among people is extraordinary. That goes without saying for Catholics, but across the city as a whole there is also expectation, a desire, a longing to welcome him. Uruguay is a country with more than a hundred years of secularisation, of separation between Church and State, and it has what we might call a peculiarity: our feast days, the religious festivals, survive under secular names. In Uruguay, for example, Christmas is called “Family Day”, Epiphany is “Children’s Day”, the Immaculate Conception used to be “Beach Day” and, above all, Holy Week is “Tourism Week”. All of this is deeply rooted. And yet we are getting ready. Take the neighbourhood of Borro, in the Casavalle basin, an area of great poverty that the Pope will visit. The whole community is preparing, with a remarkable neighbourhood festival and great enthusiasm, and also with the homes that the parish has started building and that the Pope will see. They are meant for poor families living in shacks, who will now move into decent houses, thanks to the many people who have worked alongside the parish priest, Father Pablo Coimbra.
Which moment of the Pope’s programme are you most looking forward to?
Personally, it is precisely the Pope’s visit to the Borro neighbourhood.
The Pope’s presence there shows the Church’s closeness to the poorest, but it matters also because in that part of Montevideo, the poorest area of the city, the Church runs some fifteen projects for human development:
parishes, chapels, schools, vocational schools, social and educational projects that give young people work, homes for the elderly, and what we call “children’s clubs”, which look after youngsters outside school hours. Then there is the Liceo Jubilar, a secondary school run free of charge by the Church, which has led the way in education in the city’s working-class neighbourhoods.
Finally, what message, what legacy of the Church to society, can Leo XIV bring?
First of all, we want to listen to what the Pope wishes to tell us. But I believe he will bring a message of joy and hope, which Uruguayan society badly needs, and that this will be very important. We live in a society where the value of life has, in a way, been rather lost, and I believe the Pope will speak to us about that magnificent humanity, about the sacred value of human life and about the fact that life is worth living.