GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A large yellow and white Vatican flag flutters in the breeze atop Guatemala's sturdy gray Catholic cathedral in anticipation of Pope John Paul II's visit to Central America's most populous nation starting on Monday.
But in the city's sprawling main square below no one seems to be preparing for the pontiff.
Guatemala is still mostly Roman Catholic, even though the Maya Indian majority in this country bordering Mexico practices a complicated syncretism, or blend, of Catholicism with folk saints and indigenous Mayan rites.
But many in this country of 12 million -- some reports say more than 30 percent of the population -- have left the Catholic Church for evangelical faiths that they find more liberating and closer to their spiritual needs. Every Sunday, the main square heaves with Protestant preachers and traveling musical road shows from evangelical churches. In the shadow of the Catholic cathedral, evangelicals gather for clamorous prayer and open air revival meetings.
"I will get to heaven, I will get to heaven," a teen-age Maya Indian girl dressed in a traditional multicolored blouse, her eyes tight shut and tears streaming down her face, shrieked into a microphone accompanied by a booming four-piece tropical band.
Another half dozen Maya women lay bundled in a heap on the ground beside her, weeping inconsolably as they mouthed the mantra.
For many Guatemalans, Protestant churches ranging from traditional Presbyterian to "neo-Pentecostal" are their place of Sunday worship, a far cry from the solemn prayers and wafts of incense the Spanish brought to the region during the conquest.
The dramatic shift comes after more than a century of missionary work by American Protestants, a massive humanitarian aid project by evangelical churches after a 1976 earthquake, and a 1960-96 civil war during which left-leaning liberation theology led Catholics to be seen as potential subversives.
Guatemala now has one of the highest percentages of Protestants of any Latin American Catholic nation.
LET US PRAY!
In a cavernous hall in a working-class neighborhood of the capital one recent Sunday afternoon, more than 2,000 people jumped up and down to the high-speed rhythm of a 10-piece band, shouting, whistling and waving their hands in the air.
On stage, four teen-age girls dressed in flowing crimson robes, headscarves and sparkling gold belts spun and whirled while banging on tambourines.
The music stopped and the singer addressed the hyperventilating congregation: "It's great to praise God the way we just did!" he shouted to "Hallelujahs" and whoops of agreement.
Taking the podium, "Apostle" Sergio Enriquez, main pastor of the neo-Pentecostal Eben-Ezer church, preached to the masses, illustrating his sermon with dances and jokes and even singing a romantic bolero.
Later, as a celestial melody floated above the congregation signaling it was time to pray, men and women crouched and lay on the floor sobbing violently under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
BORN-AGAIN
All but a few of the Eben-Ezer congregation were baptized Catholics, but converted after tiring of what they called their inherited religion's traditionalism, stuffiness and focus on images and statues of saints and the Virgin Mary.
"I was Catholic but I found out they told lies about everything," said Lucy de Brolo, a widow in her mid-60s attending Eben-Ezer who was "born again" in 1983.
"I used to walk 20 blocks to an empty church smelling of candles where they told me the Holy Spirit lived in a box," she said, referring to the tabernacle where the blessed sacrament representing Christ's body is kept in Catholic churches.
Other born-again Christians are looking for redemption from sins more directly than through the quiet secrecy of the Catholic confessional box.
In Guatemala City's fearsome downtown Gallito neighborhood, a sprawling mass of shacks and alleyways plagued by drug violence and shootouts between rival gangs, Maya Indian Domingo Lux guarded the door to the "Church of God, King of the Centuries."
A chubby 35-year-old dressed in a white shirt and slacks, Lux said he became a car thief and a rapist in the capital after fleeing civil war violence in western Quiche department, but changed forever after converting to evangelism.
"I said I wanted to die but they said Jesus had a plan for me," he said as about two dozen Mayas wailed in lament inside the tin-roofed garage decked out with a makeshift stage and rows of rough wooden benches. "Now I'm happy, I'm free."
"POPE FEVER" STILL CATCHING
Pope John Paul's visit to Guatemala, which ends on Tuesday and during which he will canonize Brother Pedro de San Jose Betancur, a 17th century Spaniard who tended to the sick, will be his third to the country. He also visited in 1983 and 1996.
The visit here is part of an 11-day tour, the pope's 97th foreign trip, that will also take him to Canada and Mexico.
"Why has he made so many trips to such a small country?" Enriquez, the Eben-Ezer pastor, asked during an interview after his service. "It must be because there are a large amount of people who are leaving the faith." But "pope fever" is nevertheless sweeping Guatemala, with Vatican flags perched atop cars, key rings and posters depicting the pontiff with Brother Pedro on sale on street corners and 500,000 people expected to attend a July 30 canonization mass at an unused race-track.
As 200 people filed out of a whitewashed Catholic church in downtown Guatemala City to celebrate the feast day of its patron virgin amid saints and statues, 27-year-old Eddy Gonzalez seemed more than happy to stick with the religion into which he was born.
"They were cold Catholics who were never really involved with things of God," he said of the evangelists. "Those of us who are involved stay until death."
The statues so criticized by evangelical Christians, he said, were a reminder of departed loved ones, like "a photograph of mom or dad."
Gonzalez said he would be camping in the stadium with 10 family members the night before the open air mass to ensure he caught a glimpse of the pope.
"It's an honor for Guatemala that he's coming here," he said. "It will be like seeing a saint."