APARECIDA, BRAZIL — Pope Benedict XVI ended his first pilgrimage to the Americas much as he began it: with a searing attack on diverse forces, from Marxism and capitalism to birth control, that he believes threaten society and the Roman Catholic faith.
And in comment likely to generate controversy in Latin America, the pope said the New World's indigenous population, "silently longing" for Christianity, had welcomed the teachings that "came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them." Many indigenous rights groups say the conquest ushered in a period of disease, mass murder, enslavement and the shattering of native cultures.
Turnout at his final Mass, held at Brazil's most popular religious shrine, was notably low, underscoring the very problem the pope came here to address: a Catholic Church in decline.
Wrapping up five days in the world's most populous Catholic country, the pope inaugurated a major conference of bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean, telling them they had to do a better job of grooming Catholics and building up the church.
"One can detect a certain weakening of Christian life in society overall and of participation in the life of the Catholic Church," he said.
The pope lauded "progress toward democracy" in the region but expressed concern about "authoritarian forms of government and regimes wedded to certain ideologies that we thought had been superseded."
The Latin American media widely saw the remark as a jab at leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has frequently clashed with the church hierarchy and called Christ "the greatest socialist in history."
The pope came to this region to shore up a deeply divided church that is losing multitudes of followers to Protestant denominations, secularism and apathy. The trip also was seen as a test for a pope often considered Eurocentric and aloof to the more populous bases of his far-flung church.
On that score, he did not appear to have made much headway. Only about 150,000 people came to this rural town between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro for Benedict's final Mass. The open-air celebration took place at the sanctuary of Our Lady of Aparecida, a shrine to a black Virgin Mary who is Brazil's patron saint.
The pope told the crowd that only faith in God and the church could give them hope: "Not a political ideology, not a social movement, not an economic system."
