Richard Rodriguez: The Messiah Will Come From the South Richard Rodriguez - New America Media
go to original March 19, 2013

Catholics have hailed Pope Francis as a man of the poor. The cardinals also had in mind when they elected him that he stems from the Jesuits, a missionary order known for its boldness and rigor. His papacy comes at a turbulent time for the church and Catholics hope his qualities will bring his new house in order. Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid reports from Vatican City. (AlJazeeraEnglish)

We Americans have long told ourselves that we are a God-favored people, a churchgoing, moral people. But last week when the old cardinals of Roman Catholicism looked for the future of their church, they looked south. And what we Americans heard, as if for the first time, is that the spiritual center of Christianity is in the Southern Hemisphere, not with us in the north.

How could that be?

Despite the drug addiction of Americans — an addiction second to none that has destabilized Latin America from Bolivia to Colombia to Mexico — we assume the moral high ground in the Americas. We long have regarded Latin Americans as a morally lazy race, corrupt in their civic life, tolerant of Marxism one day, fascism the next. Now we learn that the beating heart of Christianity is in the south. World Catholicism is centered there. And Protestantism, too, surges throughout Latin America.

We Americans built a wall to separate ourselves from Latin Americans and their disrespect regarding our laws. A number of us tell pollsters or listeners of talk radio that we would deport the millions of Latin Americans who are illegally here, and their children bleating about their “dreams.” Many Americans declare they do not want illegality rewarded in any way.

In the long political debate over illegal immigration, religion and morality have rarely been mentioned by those in power, except by disgraced Cardinal Roger Mahony in Los Angeles. In immigrant rights parades, it's true, one did see nuns and people carrying crosses, as in a religious procession. But right-wing commentator Pat Buchanan, famously a Catholic, described illegal immigrants from Latin America as a greater threat to our union than Al Qaeda. There was something evil coming from the south.

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