Developing nations can't hide dismay

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — From the shanty-covered hillsides of Tegucigalpa to the cosmopolitan streets of Buenos Aires and dusty villages in Africa, hopes had been high that the new pope would be someone intimately tied to the developing world and its challenges.

Disappointment was evident when a German, Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — was chosen instead.

"I would have liked someone different: younger, with new ideas and perhaps with darker skin like us," said Alfonso Mercado, an ice cream seller in Pereira, Colombia. Many in the city in Colombia's coffee-growing region hoped Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who preached in Pereira for 22 years, would be chosen.

Across the developing world, there was barely disguised disappointment — particularly among many Latin Americans, who make up roughly half the world's Catholics — that one of their own was not elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church.

"It should have been a Latino," said Gloria Vazquez, a 50-year-old housewife in Tegucigalpa. Yet she answered the call of the bells to a Mass in honor of the new pope at the Honduran capital's little cathedral.

"What are we going to do?" she asked. "We're Catholics."

The chimes sent waves of pigeons wheeling above the church, where dozens of the faithful had been listening to a radio broadcast of the papal announcement that echoed off the stained, peeling walls — a testimony to the poverty of this part of the Catholic world.

Julio Lancellotti, a priest who works with homeless and abandoned children in Sao Paulo, Brazil, frowned when he heard the papal announcement.

"We accept the pope who has been chosen," he said. "I accept in silence. We priests can have no opinion."

Many believed a pope from the developing world would be more focused on its problems, including poverty and the expansion of evangelical religions.

"Ratzinger's presence is a disaster for Latin America," snapped Bernardo Barranco, a Mexican sociologist and expert on religion, during a telephone interview from Rome.

"He took it upon himself to liquidate liberation theology. He didn't understand Latin America," said Barranco, referring to the blend of the Gospel with radical politics that rose in this region.

In Africa, the Vatican's announcement dashed hopes for those who were pulling for Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria.