PARIS: One task expected to face the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church is how to react to the Protestant evangelical churches that are rapidly expanding across the globe, observers say. “Today 75 per cent of missionaries are Americans and the majority of them are from the evangelical churches. At the end of the 19th century two thirds of Christian missionaries were Catholic and half of their number were French,” said French religious historian Odon Vallet.

“So one of the tasks facing the new pope will be to face up to the evangelical churches,” he added.

There are 1.1 billion Roman Catholics in the world and 600 million Protestants, half of whom are Pentecostalists, a movement of 300 million founded in 1906 in Los Angeles by African American Pastor William Joseph Seymour.

The success of Pentecostalism seems to be founded on its emotional approach, and the warmth and vitality of its ceremonies, which can feature miracle cures and speaking in tongues. Its flexible hierarchy also helps when the movement bids for recruits in other cultures.

“The pope (John Paul II) saw these movements as accidents that shouldn’t be there,” said Father James Reuter of the National Office of Mass Media of the Catholic Church in the Philippines.

“He said evangelical groups were increasing and had become very personal and deeply emotional. They put the stress on feeling,” said Reuter.

“While the Catholic Church has always worked on intellect and will.”

“They (evangelical groups) tend to skip the intellect and the will and go directly to the feeling. People who join these groups feel very very good because they feel that they are getting close to God,” said Reuter.

“That is good and we don’t have any argument with that. But the hostility comes in when they ask their followers not to go to Catholic mass. Not to go to confession. Not to get married in the Catholic Church,” Reuter concluded.

Evangelical churches have also blossomed in South Korea, where 25 per cent of the population have converted.

Almost half of the world’s Catholics are in Latin America, and the Protestant evangelicals are making big inroads there too.

“The pentecostalists are blooming (in Latin America), representing between 10 and 20 per cent of the population depending on the country but with greater density in Brazil, Chile and Guatamala,” said Jean-Pierre Bastian, director of Latin American studies at the Paris III university.

“Catholicism is still in the majority but they are now subject to great competition, that will only increase,” he said.

Bastian dismissed the conspiracy theory that suggests Pentecostal churches were encouraged by the US to combat communist-friendly Catholic “Liberation Theology,” which John Paul II eventually purged from the Latin American Church.

Bastian instead points to the Pentecostalists’ ability to adopt local tradition, such as samba-gospel sessions or the new “theology of prosperity”.

There is also the attraction of miracle cures and exorcisms as practiced by Sao Paulo’s charismatic priest Marcello Rossi.

Ezekiel Jones, a Catholic official in the west African state of Sierra Leone, says one of the reasons why evangelism is on the rise is that people are looking for an institution that will take care of their spiritual and physical needs.

Elders in the evangelical conclave in poverty-stricken Sierra Leone provide food and clothing for the less favoured and teach their members the art of giving.

“Although the Catholic Church is on the constant rise, our biggest rival remains the evangelical church as this is where our members go,” said one Catholic bishop, who asked not to be named.—AFP