![]() ![]() Pope Benedict addressed the crowd about how relativism enslaves and how freedom is only found in the truth and in Christ. “It’s not like my parents were teaching that to me that intentionally, but it’s what I had absorbed through the culture, both in Brazil and the United States,” he said, “this sense of ‘we can all define our own truths and our own moral values.’” It dawned on the future priest that relativism was precisely the moral system in which he had been raised.Īfrican National Eucharistic Congress ‘sparking hope’ for revival Read article In one of his speeches, Benedict spoke about the dictatorship of relativism - one of the major themes in his pontificate. Hearing Pope Benedict speak was an eye-opener for Cintra. “Though some people might have had an allergy to that, I understood the attraction.” Father Nelson Cintra at his first Mass at Holy Apostles Church in the Diocese of Boise, Idaho, June 2023. “All these people are flocking to him because he’s representing Christ,” Cintra recalled. It struck Cintra how the pope, the vicar of Christ, “is the primary representative of Christ on earth.” During the long hours of waiting for the pope to arrive, he listened to other pilgrims speak about Pope Benedict’s teachings and share stories about him. To see the Holy Father up close, he and his group had made their way to the fence early in the morning. In Madrid, Cintra recalled waiting for Pope Benedict XVI to arrive in his popemobile, noting the expectation and eagerness of the crowd. What surprised him the most about the WYD event wasn’t the enormity of the crowd but the faith of his traveling companions. Cintra didn’t know what to expect from WYD, even though, as a child, he and his family attended a papal gathering for a World Meeting of Families in Brazil (Cintra lived in Brazil until he was 13). ![]() His sister, Nalita Maria Mugayar, purchased a ticket and made plans for him to attend. A ticket to WYD MadridĪ ticket to Madrid further encouraged Cintra on his conversion path. “I knew some of the major tenets of Catholicism, and so I started investigating them and seeing if there was good reason to believe in them,” recalled the now-37-year-old. However, a crisis in his life motivated Cintra to pray and ask for God’s guidance and help, and he began looking to the Church for answers. John Paul II Parish in Idaho Falls, Idaho, Father Nelson Cintra recently told the National Catholic Register: “Growing up, I didn’t really know what Catholicism was.” ![]()
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