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Intensely emotional Protestant movements go over well in some rural areas  ALSO: Mexicans greet pope 'With our hearts in our hands' RELATED VIDEO CNN's Lucia Newman examines why Protestantism is gathering converts in Catholic Mexico Windows Media 28K 80K

January 22, 1999
Web posted at: 10:03 p.m. EST (0303 GMT)

MEXICO CITY (CNN) -- In a southern Mexican township where 25 years of persecutions have killed dozens of their colleagues and forced 25,000 to flee, evangelical Protestants are now discovering a fertile environment to plant new churches.

For two decades, most Protestants in San Juan Chamula, in Mexico's southernmost Chiapas state, had to worship in the privacy of their own homes. Their very presence angered villagers, who saw Protestants as a threat to their local cultural, religious and economic traditions.

But in December, hundreds of Tzotzil Indians began holding services in a half-built concrete church in the Chamula hamlet of Arbenza, inaugurating the first non-Catholic temple ever built in the township.

Most Protestants are still too afraid to return to their homes in Chamula, but they see the new church as a foothold for their faith.

"We began with just one family here," said a local evangelical pastor. "Now we are many."

Some blame Protestantism's success on dissatisfaction with Catholic conservatism

The spread of these struggling yet resilient Protestant churches in Latin America, home to half of the world's 1 billion Catholics, worries Roman Catholic Church leaders. It is a concern Pope John Paul II is expected to discuss during his present visit to Mexico.

Since 1979, when John Paul assumed the papacy, the Catholic Church has lost an estimated 40 to 60 million followers in Latin America. In Mexico alone, at least 10 percent of the people have converted to Protestant faiths.

Evangelicals are especially successful in rural areas, where people are poor, illiterate and desperate.

"Many of these religious movements, especially the Pentecostals, who are very emotionally charged, get a grip in the poorest areas. And that's because these are the areas most abandoned by the government, by progress and by the Catholic Church," said religious affairs expert Bernardo Barranco.

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Protestantism has become equally prevalent in Mexico City.

Some blame the pattern on the Catholic Church's strict doctrine, which rejects divorce and forbids contraception.

Other religious leaders see it as an inevitable result of the search for spiritual enlightenment.

"People look to satisfy their spiritual needs, and when they don't find the solution in one place, they look in another," said Carl Pratt, president of the Mormon Church in Mexico.

What the pope has to say about the changing religious climate will probably guide Catholic leaders hoping to prevent the world's largest concentration of Catholics from becoming a minority in Latin America.

Havana Bureau Chief Lucia Newman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.