Pope gives Brazil a saint, and several stern warnings

Pope Benedict XVI on Friday gave this enormous Roman Catholic country its first native-born saint, canonizing a Franciscan monk credited with providing thousands of miracle cures.

The pope also used the occasion to remind followers to live their lives like saints, exhorting the faithful to resist popular media that glamorize sex and ridicule virginity.

“The world needs transparent lives, clear souls, pure minds that refuse to be perceived as mere objects of pleasure,” he said.

Later, the pope urged Brazil’s bishops to re-energize their efforts to spread the word of God, but to do so always in keeping with orthodox church doctrine.

The toughly worded admonition laid out a path markedly in contrast to the way Catholicism is often preached and practiced in Latin America. Benedict told the bishops to follow only the official liturgy and to center their teachings on Jesus, not on political or ideological concerns.

The earlier ceremony to elevate Antonio de Sant’Anna Galvao to sainthood represented a nod to popular local traditions. Hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Brazilians gathered at Campo de Marte, a grassy airfield on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, to celebrate their new saint.

In this “age full of hedonism,” the pope said, Galvao’s life of sacrifice and prayer, his promotion of the family and his ministry to the poor should serve as a model for Christians everywhere.

The pontiff’s warning was aimed at the many Brazilians who engage in what he sees as a sensual lifestyle that emphasizes sex and beauty over spiritual values.

Especially, he warned, “it is necessary to oppose those elements of the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity before marriage.”

“In our day,” he continued, “Our Lady [the Virgin Mary] has been given to us as the best defense against the evils that afflict modern life.”

Galvao, who lived and worked in Brazil in the 18th and early 19th centuries, built a religious retreat for women. He is regarded as the guardian of women in labor.

Brazilian believers swallow so-called Galvao pills, small pieces of paper inscribed with a prayer in Latin, in hope of being healed of various ailments.

According to legend, the friar came upon a sick man and, not knowing what else to do, scribbled a prayer on a piece of paper and gave it to the man, who recovered.

These days, thousands of Galvao pills are made by cloistered nuns who distribute them for free or for donations. The prayer nowadays is addressed to the Virgin Mary: “After birth, the Virgin remained intact. Mother of God, intercede on our behalf.”

Benedict made no mention of the pills Friday.

Across town at the Monastery of Light, which Galvao founded and where he is buried, devotees were arriving in a steady stream. They placed written messages on the friar’s tomb, kissed the feet of his statue, prayed for ailing loved ones and obtained the pills.

“I’m so thrilled that Friar Galvao is becoming a saint!” gushed Mara das Dores Cruz, 85, who said the pills helped cure her 14-year-old grandson’s heart ailment. “It’s about time Brazil has its own saint!”

An emotional Nery Salete Theodoro, who prays regularly to Galvao on behalf of elderly people she cares for, said the new saint helped her mother give birth to her.

“I knew Friar Galvao before I was born! Yes, that’s right,” said Theodoro, 54. “My mother had a difficult pregnancy with me. And whenever my mother had a difficult pregnancy, she prayed to Friar Galvao and took the pills and everything worked out all right.”

One of the two miracles attributed to Galvao and certified by the Vatican -- as required for sainthood -- involves the difficult birth of a baby to a woman with a deformed uterus.

The woman, Sandra Grossi de Almeida, was told by doctors that she would not be able to carry her fetus to term. But after taking Galvao pills and praying to the friar, she gave birth without problem to a boy, Enzo.

The mother and son were featured at Friday’s canonization Mass, bowing before the pope, who embraced them. Enzo, now 7, was dressed all in white.

“It was so exciting,” De Almeida told Brazilian television afterward. “My heart was in my throat.”

Estimates of the size of Friday’s gathering ranged from 600,000 to 1 million, a respectable but not overwhelming turnout in what is one of the largest Catholic cities in the world.

Benedict entered the field in his bulletproof “popemobile” to cheers and song. He climbed an austere white stage, joining several hundred prelates whose white cassocks whipped in the wind.

As the pope passed by, several student pranksters managed to hold aloft a banner declaring their happy use of condoms, according to Brazilian newspaper website Folha Online.

“What the pope preaches doesn’t mix with the 21st century,” Lucas Coutinho, organizer of the mini-protest, told the paper.

The pope celebrated late-afternoon vespers with Brazil’s 430 bishops at the Cathedral of Sao Paulo, then delivered a homily that reminded the assembled clerics of what he called their “true mission”: the preaching of God’s singular truth and “methodical evangelization” as the only way to save souls.

“A leap forward in the quality of people’s Christian lives is needed,” the pope said, seated on a carved wooden throne and dressed in bright-red vestments.

He described a troubled church and a troubled society “experiencing moments of worrying disorientation.”

He cited “the plague of divorce and extramarital unions” and legislation that has “attacked with impunity” the sanctity of marriage and family.

“Crimes against life are justified in the name of individual freedom and rights,” Benedict said. “It seems clear that the principal cause of this problem is to be found in the lack of an evangelization completely centered on Christ and his church.”

The pope gave scant mention to other problems that many Brazilians consider urgent, such as the pursuit of social justice. Instead, he sketched a Catholicism he described as authentic but one many Brazilians see as rigid and inflexible.

Theological training for both clergymen and lay religious workers “has to be updated,” the pope acknowledged, but the fundamental rules of celibacy for priests and chastity for everyone else cannot be changed.

“Good and assiduous spiritual direction is indispensable for fostering human growth and eliminating the risk of going astray in the area of sexuality,” he said.

Benedict warned against deviating from traditional church liturgy and exhorted the bishops to “the rediscovery and appreciation of obedience to liturgical norms.”

Quoting his predecessor, the late John Paul II, he said the liturgy is “never anyone’s private property.”

The pope apparently was alluding to the spread of charismatic Catholicism in Brazil, in which priests often adopt the energetic and sometimes flamboyant preaching techniques of their evangelical Protestant counterparts.

wilkinson@latimes.com

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com