Addendum.

He said that no-one he knew went to World Youth Day, except for one kid he knew in elementary school who had gotten sent away to boarding school in Spain since he was always in trouble and ended up getting hyper-Catholic; that kid had posted a few pictures on Facebook, saying it was the best experience of his life.

“I wonder if he says that now,” I was like.  “That was before the Pope spoke out against capitalism.”

My one Brazilian student didn’t know anything about how that affected things, though, or who ran the boarding school in Spain (Opus Dei? the Legionnaires?).

He also said that most of his friends in high school were atheists.

I wonder what it means to be an atheist in Brazil.  I'll have to ask him about that.  I wonder if it's more Marx and less Richard Dawkins crap.