Foreigners account for one-third of Brazil's 14,500 priests, and in another cultural mismatch, three-quarters of Brazilian priests come from small towns, while three-quarters of the people live in cities.

In the Japanese communities in Brazil, there was a strong performance of Brazilian priests to convert the Japanese.

Many Brazilian priests have left the church in recent years to marry, and two married priests were recently ordained by a Brazilian bishop.

"If I were pope, I would start a condom factory right in the Vatican," one Brazilian priest told me.

In 2005 Brazilian priests, Fr.

Daniel Cargnin, was a Brazilian priest and amateur paleontologist born in Nova Palma, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in 1930.

But he also discouraged the notion of squatting on untended land that some Brazilian priests have encouraged.

Last year, the society gave its annual award for antislavery work to the Rev. Ricardo Rezende, a Brazilian priest who has received death threats for denouncing slavery on Amazon estates.

All too commonly, Brazilian priests must work alone in densely populated areas where "needs and expectations exceed all human possibility," Bishop Valfredo Bernardo Tepe said at the synod.

In 1861, Father Francisco João de Azevedo, a Brazilian priest, made his own typewriter with basic materials and tools, such as wood and knives.