Feminists, homosexuals to protest Pope's visit to Brasil

dpa German Press Agency Published: Sunday May 6, 2007

Brasilia- Feminists and gay-rights groups vowed to protest
Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Brazil scheduled for May 9-13, the
official ABR news agency reported Sunday.
The report said women's groups would protest in front of churches
in various provincial capitals to register their opposition to the
Vatican's conservative stances on women's rights.

Catholics for the Right to Choose, a movement that favours
legalized abortion, plans to follow the pope and demonstrate wherever
he appears in public.

Spokeswoman Dulce Xavier accused the pontiff of refusing to
recognize the political power of woman in the church and within the
family, relegating them to the sole role of motherhood.

"The persistent idea is that women should serve the church but
without giving them any voice, any power of decision within the
church," Xavier said of the prohibition of women in the priesthood.

She criticized the Church's interference in the Brazilian
government, saying: "It fails to win the obedience of its flock, and
so uses the power of its influence to pressure the state to embrace
the norms and laws that it considers important, to oblige the people
to comply - through laws or public policy - with what it cannot
impose on its own members.

The Gays of Bahia Group, the largest and oldest gay-rigths group
in Brazil, said it will demonstrate at the Cathedral of Salvador in
the state capital, and publicly burn official church pronouncements
criticizing homosexuals. It would also burn images of the pope as
form of recalling the epoch of the Inquisition.

The group said the cathedral property was used to torture and
murder homosexuals during the colonial period, when the Catholic
church judged them as "heretics" for violating its dogma.

The organization's president, Marcelo Cerqueira, said the protests
would also be aimed at other rules, reaffirmed by Benedict XVI, such
as the condemnation of divorce and the use of birth-control pills and
condoms.

"It is a criticism against the (Church's) positions and in favour
of freedom," he said.

Cerqueira stressed that his group was not against Catholics, but
against the conservative positions represented by the pope, "who sows
discord and is culpable for many victims infected with the HIV virus,
and for many unwanted pregnancies."

He said the Vatican's policies "heighten hatred and homophobia,"
and noted that a homosexual is killed every two days in Brazil, often
by stabbings and gunshots.

© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency

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