Latin America cannot be understood without Christianity. From Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, the Catholic Church has contributed in a decisive way to form a living synthesis of cultures, a spiritual crossbreeding that is embodied in all the material ramifications of Latin life. There is a religious principle that unites the continent, over and above national differences. Neither artificially assembled ideological blocs, nor more or less effective technocratic projects have been able to match the solidary imprint of the Christian ethos, an essential substratum for political integration, that old dream we have been cherishing since the Bolivarian Amphictyony.

A continent prone to ideological romanticism has created, throughout its history, a tradition that extols political messianism as a path to social redemption. Krauze has just reminded us of this, and long before him, the nourished Arielist literature that appealed to positivism in pursuit of more "scientific" solutions. The subsequent irruption and the solitary dominance that Marxism and its derivations have exercised in recent decades in the Latin American academy consolidated the close link between cessationist politics and utopian voluntarism. Thus, political messianism is part of Latin civic culture.

Ratzinger's trip to Mexico and Cuba took place in this context. One of the constants in the Pope's intellectual production is his denunciation of ideological messianisms. From his magnificent thesis of habilitation(The Theology of the History of St. Bonaventure) to The Unity of Nations; Church, Ecumenism and Politics or Truth, Values, Power. Touchstones of pluralistic society, the man who visit Latin America has been a staunch defender of freedom against absolutism. In his autobiography, written in 1977, Ratzinger denounced the dangers of Marxist messianism that preserves religious fervor by substituting God for the political action of the individual. For the future Pope, the place of God was replaced "by the totalitarianism of an atheistic cult that is ready to sacrifice all humanity to its false god". Ratzinger never hesitated to combat it: "I have seen without veils the cruel face of this atheistic devotion, the psychological terror, the unbridled abandonment of any moral reflection, considered as a bourgeois residue, where the question was the ideological end".

Political messianism, in Mexico, built the philanthropic ogre denounced by Octavio Paz, a corrupt Leviathan unable to stop the Cainite violence of drug trafficking. A sector of the Mexican partitocracy is determined to resurrect the Jacobin deviation that did so much damage in the past. And in Cuba, messianism sustains a sacralized, monist State, which subjugates the population by appealing to ideological premises that Benedict XVI denounces as useless. The solution to these evils is freedom. Freedom in all spheres, including religious freedom. A society created etsi Deus non daretur annuls the value substratum of institutions. And without values, democracy is lost. For this reason, the Pope comes to Latin America not only to confirm Christians in the faith. He also comes to remind us that the moral crisis is at the root of social problems and to proclaim the need for freedom manager to curb the omnipotence of absolute States. Twenty years ago, the then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that "all the power of the Papacy is the power of conscience". Today, the hope-filled voice of the papal conscience speaks out in a scenario of fratricidal violence and ideological totalitarianism. Hopefully, we Latinos know how to listen.