Pope takes anti-abortion message to Latin America

SAO PAULO, May 9 (Reuters) Pope Benedict arrived in Brazil today, his first visit to Latin America, on a mission to reaffirm traditional family values and stem the exodus of Roman Catholics to other faiths.

The Church ''will not fail to insist on the need to take action to ensure that the family, the basic cell of society, is strengthened,'' the 80-year-old Pope said in a speech after arriving at Sao Paulo's rain-soaked international airport.

He reiterated his firm opposition to abortion -- just as Brazil's health minister and churchmen waged a war of words over the issue.

''I am well aware that the soul of this people, as of all Latin America, safeguards values that are radically Christian,'' the Pope said in Portuguese after he was greeted by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

''This identity will be reinforced through the promotion of respect for life from the moment of conception until natural death as an integral requirement of human nature,'' he said.

Brazil has the world's largest Catholic population, with about 125 million faithful. But the Pope's five-day trip is overshadowed by concerns that the Catholic Church is losing its grip here and elsewhere in Latin America.

Millions of Latin Americans -- home to nearly half the world's 1.1 billion Catholics -- have left the Catholic fold to Protestant branches such as Pentecostalism.

The Church's opposition to contraception, abortion rights and sex outside marriage has also generated growing doubts among followers in Brazil and across Latin America. It has also caused friction with some governments.

Pope Benedict said he would raise the defections issue at a conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops in the town of Aparecida, where he will deliver the keynote address.

''This is our common worry. We need to find a convincing response,'' he told reporters.

He also said Catholic politicians who support abortion should be excommunicated. He had been asked if he supported a threat by Mexican church leaders to excommunicate leftist lawmakers who last month voted to legalize abortion in Mexico City.

ABORTION DISPUTE Just before the visit, Lula and his health minister appeared to take issue with the Church's stance on abortion.

Lula said the matter should be treated as a health concern because many Brazilian women die from clandestine abortions.

Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao, who wants a national plebiscite to legalize abortion, accused Church groups of stifling debate.

That prompted a harsh response from Geraldo Majella, head of Brazil's national bishops' council, who accused the government of promoting promiscuity.

Temporao fired back today, saying he was not worried by the Pope's excommunication threat. He said he wanted women to join in the abortion debate because although men made the laws it was women who were suffering.

''Unfortunately, men don't get pregnant. If they did, this question would already be resolved,'' Temporao said.

Many priests are also waiting for guidance on social action in a continent marked by poverty and deprivation.

Pope Benedict promised in his speech to give priority to the poor, the young and to indigenous peoples. He said earlier that Latin American clergy rightly need to address social justice issues, but should stay out of politics.

The Pope is well known in Latin America for the crackdown he led as then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger against the Liberation Theology movement in the 1970s and 1980s, when leftist priests worked with the poor and against military dictatorships.

He has a reputation as a conservative theologian and lacks the charisma of his popular predecessor, Pope John Paul.

More than 1 million people are expected at an outdoor mass on Friday in Sao Paulo, where he will canonize the 18th-century Friar Antonio Galvao, the first Brazilian-born saint.

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