The New Schism

It will be interesting to see if Latin America goes pentacostal. Its time for the old religion to come back anyway.

Clamoring for attention from a world distracted by war and terrorism, Latin Americans were hoping for a pope from their region where, by some accounts, 65 percent of the world's Catholics live.

It is also where anti-choice laws cause millions of unsafe, illegal abortions each year and where a popular repudiation of the church's stance on abortion and birth control is taking place.

That may spell headaches for the Vatican as Latin American leaders face secular pressures to soften abortion laws. But any hopes that a new pope might have tilted the church's stance on abortion was shot down with the election Tuesday of ultraconservative German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.

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