Pope praises Jesuit missions

Associated Press

ASUNCION, PARAGUAY

Pope Francis is balancing out his apology for the crimes the Catholic Church committed against indigenous during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas with high praise for the Jesuit missions in Paraguay that brought Christianity and European-style education and economic organization to the natives.

The Argentine Jesuit praised the Jesuit “reductions,” as the missions were known in Paraguay, as an almost utopian social and economic experiment – one that was immortalized in the 1986 film “The Mission.” He said Saturday they were “one of the most-important experiences of evangelization and social organization in history.”

“There the Gospel was the soul and the life of communities which did not know hunger, unemployment, illiteracy or oppression,” he said.