Post-Synodal Apostolic
Exhortation of the Holy Father Francis, “Querida Amazonia”, 12.02.2020
POST-SYNODAL APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
QUERIDA AMAZONIA
OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
TO THE PEOPLE OF GOD
AND TO ALL PERSONS OF GOOD WILL
AND TO ALL PERSONS OF GOOD WILL
1. The beloved Amazon region stands before the world in all its splendour,
its drama and its mystery. God granted us the grace of focusing on that region
during the Synod held in Rome from 6-27 October last, which concluded by
issuing its Final Document, The Amazon: New Paths for the Church and
for an Integral Ecology.
The significance of this Exhortation
2. During the Synod, I listened to the presentations and read with interest
the reports of the discussion groups. In this Exhortation, I wish to offer my
own response to this process of dialogue and discernment. I will not go into
all of the issues treated at length in the final document. Nor do I claim to
replace that text or to duplicate it. I wish merely to propose a brief
framework for reflection that can apply concretely to the life of the Amazon
region a synthesis of some of the larger concerns that I have
expressed in earlier documents, and that can help guide us to a harmonious,
creative and fruitful reception of the entire synodal process.
3. At the same time, I would like to officially present the Final Document,
which sets forth the conclusions of the Synod, which profited from the
participation of many people who know better than myself or the Roman Curia the
problems and issues of the Amazon region, since they live there, they
experience its suffering and they love it passionately. I have preferred not to
cite the Final Document in this Exhortation, because I would encourage everyone
to read it in full.
4. May God grant that the entire Church be enriched and challenged by the
work of the synodal assembly. May the pastors, consecrated men and women and
lay faithful of the Amazon region strive to apply it, and may it inspire in
some way every person of good will.
Dreams for the Amazon region
5. The Amazon region is a multinational and interconnected whole, a great
biome shared by nine countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana,
Peru, Surinam, Venezuela and the territory of French Guiana. Yet I am
addressing the present Exhortation to the whole world. I am doing so to help
awaken their affection and concern for that land which is also “ours”, and to
invite them to value it and acknowledge it as a sacred mystery. But also because
the Church’s concern for the problems of this area obliges us to discuss,
however briefly, a number of other important issues that can assist other areas
of our world in confronting their own challenges.
6. Everything that the Church has to offer must become incarnate in a
distinctive way in each part of the world, so that the Bride of Christ can take
on a variety of faces that better manifest the inexhaustible riches of God’s
grace. Preaching must become incarnate, spirituality must become incarnate, ecclesial
structures must become incarnate. For this reason, I humbly propose in this
brief Exhortation to speak of four great dreams that the Amazon region inspires
in me.
7. I dream of an Amazon region that fights for the rights of the
poor, the original peoples and the least of our brothers and sisters, where
their voices can be heard and their dignity advanced.
I dream of an Amazon region that can preserve its distinctive cultural
riches, where the beauty of our humanity shines forth in so many varied ways.
I dream of an Amazon region that can jealously preserve its overwhelming
natural beauty and the superabundant life teeming in its rivers and forests.
I dream of Christian communities capable of generous commitment, incarnate
in the Amazon region, and giving the Church new faces with Amazonian features.
CHAPTER ONE
A SOCIAL DREAM
8. Our dream is that of an Amazon region that can integrate and promote all
its inhabitants, enabling them to enjoy “good living”. But this calls for a
prophetic plea and an arduous effort on behalf of the poor. For though it is
true that the Amazon region is facing an ecological disaster, it also has to be
made clear that “a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach;
it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to
hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”.[1] We
do not need an environmentalism “that is concerned for the biome but ignores
the Amazonian peoples”.[2]
Injustice and crime
9. The colonizing interests that have continued to expand – legally and
illegally – the timber and mining industries, and have expelled or marginalized
the indigenous peoples, the river people and those of African descent, are
provoking a cry that rises up to heaven:
“Many are the trees
where torture dwelt,
and vast are the forests
purchased with a thousand deaths”.[3]
where torture dwelt,
and vast are the forests
purchased with a thousand deaths”.[3]
“The timber merchants have members of parliament,
while our Amazonia has no one to defend her…
They exiled the parrots and the monkeys…
the chestnut harvests will never be the same”.[4]
while our Amazonia has no one to defend her…
They exiled the parrots and the monkeys…
the chestnut harvests will never be the same”.[4]
10. This encouraged the more recent migrations of the indigenous peoples to
the outskirts of the cities. There they find no real freedom from their
troubles, but rather the worst forms of enslavement, subjection and poverty.
Those cities, marked by great inequality, where the majority of the population
of the Amazon region now live, are witnessing an increase of xenophobia, sexual
exploitation and human trafficking. The cry of the Amazon region does not rise
up from the depths of the forests alone, but from the streets of its cities as
well.
11. There is no need for me to repeat here the ample diagnoses presented
before and during the Synod. Yet let us at least listen to one of the voices
that was heard: “We are being affected by the timber merchants, ranchers and
other third parties. Threatened by economic actors who import a model alien to
our territories. The timber industries enter the territory in order to exploit
the forest, whereas we protect the forest for the sake of our children, for
there we have meat, fish, medicinal plants, fruit trees… The construction of
hydroelectric plants and the project of waterways has an impact on the river
and on the land… We are a region of stolen territories”.[5]
12. My predecessor Benedict XVI condemned “the devastation of the
environment and the Amazon basin, and the threats against the human dignity of
the peoples living in that region”.[6] I would add that many of
these tragic situations were related to a false “mystique of the Amazon”. It is
well known that, ever since the final decades of the last century, the Amazon
region has been presented as an enormous empty space to be filled, a source of
raw resources to be developed, a wild expanse to be domesticated. None of this
recognizes the rights of the original peoples; it simply ignores them as if
they did not exist, or acts as if the lands on which they live do not belong to
them. Even in the education of children and young people, the indigenous were
viewed as intruders or usurpers. Their lives, their concerns, their ways of
struggling to survive were of no interest. They were considered more an
obstacle needing to be eliminated than as human beings with the same dignity as
others and possessed of their own acquired rights.
13. Certain slogans contributed to this mistaken notion, including the
slogan “Don’t give it away!”,[7] as if this sort of takeover
could only come from other countries, whereas in fact local powers, using the
excuse of development, were also party to agreements aimed at razing the forest
– together with the life forms that it shelters – with impunity and
indiscriminately. The original peoples often witnessed helplessly the
destruction of the natural surroundings that enabled them to be nourished and
kept healthy, to survive and to preserve a way of life in a culture which gave
them identity and meaning. The imbalance of power is enormous; the weak have no
means of defending themselves, while the winners take it all, and “the needy
nations grow more destitute, while the rich nations become even richer”.[8]
14. The businesses, national or international, which harm the Amazon and
fail to respect the right of the original peoples to the land and its
boundaries, and to self-determination and prior consent, should be called for
what they are: injustice and crime. When certain businesses out for
quick profit appropriate lands and end up privatizing even potable water, or
when local authorities give free access to the timber companies, mining or oil
projects, and other businesses that raze the forests and pollute the
environment, economic relationships are unduly altered and become an instrument
of death. They frequently resort to utterly unethical means such as penalizing
protests and even taking the lives of indigenous peoples who oppose projects,
intentionally setting forest fires, and suborning politicians and the
indigenous people themselves. All this accompanied by grave violations of human
rights and new forms of slavery affecting women in particular, the scourge of
drug trafficking used as a way of subjecting the indigenous peoples, or human
trafficking that exploits those expelled from their cultural context. We cannot
allow globalization to become “a new version of colonialism”.[9]
To feel outrage and to beg forgiveness
15. We need to feel outrage,[10] as Moses did (cf. Ex 11:8),
as Jesus did (cf. Mk 3:5), as God does in the face of
injustice (cf. Am 2:4-8; 5:7-12; Ps 106:40).
It is not good for us to become inured to evil; it is not good when our social
consciousness is dulled before “an exploitation that is leaving destruction and
even death throughout our region… jeopardizing the lives of millions of people
and especially the habitat of peasants and indigenous peoples”.[11] The
incidents of injustice and cruelty that took place in the Amazon region even in
the last century ought to provoke profound abhorrence, but they should also
make us more sensitive to the need to acknowledge current forms of human
exploitation, abuse and killing. With regard to the shameful past, let us
listen, for example, to an account of the sufferings of the indigenous people
during the “rubber age” in the Venezuelan Amazon region: “They gave no money to
the indigenous people, but only merchandise, for which they charged dearly and
the people never finished paying for it… They would pay for it but they were
told, “You are racking up a debt” and the indigenous person would have to go
back to work… More than twenty ye’kuana towns were entirely razed to the
ground. The ye’kuana women were raped and their breasts amputated, pregnant
women had their children torn from the womb, men had their fingers or hands cut
off so they could not sail… along with other scenes of the most absurd sadism”.[12]
16. Such a history of suffering and contempt does not heal easily. Nor has
colonization ended; in many places, it has been changed, disguised and
concealed,[13] while losing none of its contempt for the life
of the poor and the fragility of the environment. As the bishops of the
Brazilian Amazon have noted, “the history of the Amazon region shows that it
was always a minority that profited from the poverty of the majority and from
the unscrupulous plundering of the region’s natural riches, God’s gift to the
peoples who have lived there for millennia and to the immigrants who arrived in
centuries past”.[14]
17. Yet even as we feel this healthy sense of indignation, we are reminded
that it is possible to overcome the various colonizing mentalities and to build
networks of solidarity and development. “The challenge, in short, is to ensure
a globalization in solidarity, a globalization without marginalization”.[15] Alternatives
can be sought for sustainable herding and agriculture, sources of energy that
do not pollute, dignified means of employment that do not entail the
destruction of the natural environment and of cultures. At the same time, the
indigenous peoples and the poor need to be given an education suited to
developing their abilities and empowering them. These are the goals to which
the genuine talent and shrewdness of political leaders should be directed. Not
as a way of restoring to the dead the life taken from them, or even of
compensating the survivors of that carnage, but at least today to be
authentically human.
18. It is encouraging to remember that amid the grave excesses of the
colonization of the Amazon region, so full of “contradictions and suffering”,[16] many
missionaries came to bring the Gospel, leaving their homes and leading an
austere and demanding life alongside those who were most defenceless. We know
that not all of them were exemplary, yet the work of those who remained
faithful to the Gospel also inspired “a legislation like the Laws of the
Indies, which defended the dignity of the indigenous peoples from violence
against their peoples and territories”.[17] Since it was often
the priests who protected the indigenous peoples from their plunderers and
abusers, the missionaries recounted that “they begged insistently that we not
abandon them and they extorted from us the promise that we would return”.[18]
19. Today the Church can be no less committed. She is called to hear the
plea of the Amazonian peoples and “to exercise with transparency her prophetic
mission”.[19] At the same time, since we cannot deny that the
wheat was mixed with the tares, and that the missionaries did not always take
the side of the oppressed, I express my shame and once more “I humbly ask
forgiveness, not only for the offenses of the Church herself, but for the
crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of
America”[20] as well as for the terrible crimes that followed
throughout the history of the Amazon region. I thank the members of the
original peoples and I repeat: “Your lives cry out… You are living memory of
the mission that God has entrusted to us all: the protection of our common
home”.[21]
A sense of community
20. Efforts to build a just society require a capacity for fraternity, a
spirit of human fellowship. Hence, without diminishing the importance of
personal freedom, it is clear that the original peoples of the Amazon region
have a strong sense of community. It permeates “their work, their rest, their
relationships, their rites and celebrations. Everything is shared; private
areas – typical of modernity – are minimal. Life is a communal journey where
tasks and responsibilities are apportioned and shared on the basis of the
common good. There is no room for the notion of an individual detached from the
community or from the land”.[22] Their relationships are
steeped in the surrounding nature, which they feel and think of as a reality
that integrates society and culture, and a prolongation of their bodies,
personal, familial and communal:
“The morning star draws near,
the wings of the hummingbirds flutter;
my heart pounds louder than the cascade:
with your lips I will water the land
as the breeze softly blows among us”.[23]
the wings of the hummingbirds flutter;
my heart pounds louder than the cascade:
with your lips I will water the land
as the breeze softly blows among us”.[23]
21. All this makes even more unsettling the sense of bewilderment and
uprootedness felt by those indigenous people who feel forced to migrate to the
cities, as they attempt to preserve their dignity amid more individualistic
urban habitats and a hostile environment. How do we heal all these hurts, how
do we bring serenity and meaning to these uprooted lives? Given situations like
these, we ought to appreciate and accompany the efforts made by many of those
groups to preserve their values and way of life, and to integrate in new
situations without losing them, but instead offering them as their own
contribution to the common good.
22. Christ redeemed the whole person, and he wishes to restore in each of
us the capacity to enter into relationship with others. The Gospel proposes the
divine charity welling up in the heart of Christ and generating a pursuit of
justice that is at once a hymn of fraternity and of solidarity, an impetus to
the culture of encounter. The wisdom of the way of life of the original peoples
– for all its limitations – encourages us to deepen this desire. In view of
this, the bishops of Ecuador have appealed for “a new social and cultural
system which privileges fraternal relations within a framework of
acknowledgment and esteem for the different cultures and ecosystems, one
capable of opposing every form of discrimination and oppression between human
beings”.[24]
Broken institutions
23. In the Encyclical Laudato Si’, I noted that “if everything
is related, then the health of the society’s institutions has consequences for
the environment and the quality of human life… Within each social stratum, and
between them, institutions develop to regulate human relationships. Anything
which weakens those institutions has negative consequences, such as injustice,
violence and loss of freedom. A number of countries have a relatively low level
of institutional effectiveness, which results in greater problems for their
people”.[25]
24. Where do the institutions of civil society in the Amazon region stand?
The Synod’s Instrumentum Laboris, which synthesizes contributions
made by numerous individuals and groups from the Amazon region, speaks of “a
culture that poisons the state and its institutions, permeating all social
strata, including the indigenous communities. We are talking about a true moral
scourge; as a result, there is a loss of confidence in institutions and their
representatives, which totally discredits politics and social organizations.
The Amazonian peoples are not immune to corruption, and they end up being its
principal victims”.[26]
25. Nor can we exclude the possibility that members of the Church have been
part of networks of corruption, at times to the point of agreeing to keep
silent in exchange for economic assistance for ecclesial works. Precisely for
this reason, proposals were made at the Synod to insist that “special attention
be paid to the provenance of donations or other kinds of benefits, as well as
to investments made by ecclesiastical institutions or individual Christians”.[27]
Social dialogue
26. The Amazon region ought to be a place of social dialogue, especially
between the various original peoples, for the sake of developing forms of
fellowship and joint struggle. The rest of us are called to participate as
“guests” and to seek out with great respect paths of encounter that can enrich
the Amazon region. If we wish to dialogue, we should do this in the first place
with the poor. They are not just another party to be won over, or merely
another individual seated at a table of equals. They are our principal dialogue
partners, those from whom we have the most to learn, to whom we need to listen
out of a duty of justice, and from whom we must ask permission before
presenting our proposals. Their words, their hopes and their fears should be
the most authoritative voice at any table of dialogue on the Amazon region. And
the great question is: “What is their idea of ‘good living’ for themselves and
for those who will come after them?”
27. Dialogue must not only favour the preferential option on behalf of the
poor, the marginalized and the excluded, but also respect them as having a
leading role to play. Others must be acknowledged and esteemed precisely as
others, each with his or her own feelings, choices and ways of living and
working. Otherwise, the result would be, once again, “a plan drawn up by the
few for the few”,[28] if not “a consensus on paper or a
transient peace for a contented minority”.[29] Should this be
the case, “a prophetic voice must be raised”,[30] and we as
Christians are called to make it heard.
This gives rise to the following dream.
CHAPTER TWO
A CULTURAL DREAM
28. The important thing is to promote the Amazon region, but this does not
imply colonizing it culturally but instead helping it to bring out the best of
itself. That is in fact what education is meant to do: to cultivate without
uprooting, to foster growth without weakening identity, to be supportive
without being invasive. Just as there are potentialities in nature that could
be lost forever, something similar could happen with cultures that have a
message yet to be heard, but are now more than ever under threat.
The Amazonian polyhedron
29. The Amazon region is host to many peoples and nationalities, and over
110 indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation (IPVI).[31] Their
situation is very tenuous and many feel that they are the last bearers of a
treasure doomed to disappear, allowed to survive only if they make no trouble,
while the postmodern colonization advances. They should not be viewed as
“uncivilized” savages. They are simply heirs to different cultures and other
forms of civilization that in earlier times were quite developed.[32]
30. Prior to the colonial period, the population was concentrated on the
shores of the rivers and lakes, but the advance of colonization drove the older
inhabitants into the interior of the forest. Today, growing desertification
once more drives many of them into the outskirts and sidewalks of the cities,
at times in dire poverty but also in an inner fragmentation due to the loss of
the values that had previously sustained them. There they usually lack the
points of reference and the cultural roots that provided them with an identity
and a sense of dignity, and they swell the ranks of the outcast. This disrupts
the cultural transmission of a wisdom that had been passed down for centuries
from generation to generation. Cities, which should be places of encounter, of
mutual enrichment and of exchange between different cultures, become a tragic
scenario of discarded lives.
31. Each of the peoples that has survived in the Amazon region possesses
its own cultural identity and unique richness in our multicultural universe,
thanks to the close relationship established by the inhabitants with their
surroundings in a non-deterministic symbiosis which is hard to conceive using
mental categories imported from without:
“Once there was a countryside, with its river,
its animals, its clouds and its trees.
But sometimes, when the countryside, with its river and trees,
was nowhere to be seen,
those things had to spring up in the mind of a child”.[33]
its animals, its clouds and its trees.
But sometimes, when the countryside, with its river and trees,
was nowhere to be seen,
those things had to spring up in the mind of a child”.[33]
“Make the river your blood…
Then plant yourself,
blossom and grow:
let your roots sink into the ground
forever and ever,
and then at last
become a canoe,
a skiff, a raft,
soil, a jug,
a farmhouse and a man”.[34]
Then plant yourself,
blossom and grow:
let your roots sink into the ground
forever and ever,
and then at last
become a canoe,
a skiff, a raft,
soil, a jug,
a farmhouse and a man”.[34]
32. Human groupings, their lifestyles and their worldviews, are as varied
as the land itself, since they have had to adapt themselves to geography and
its possibilities. Fishers are not the same as hunters, and the gatherers of
the interior are not the same as those who cultivate the flood lands. Even now,
we see in the Amazon region thousands of indigenous communities, people of
African descent, river people and city dwellers, who differ from one another
and embrace a great human diversity. In each land and its features, God
manifests himself and reflects something of his inexhaustible beauty. Each
distinct group, then, in a vital synthesis with its surroundings, develops its
own form of wisdom.Those of us who observe this from without should avoid unfair
generalizations, simplistic arguments and conclusions drawn only on the basis
of our own mindsets and experiences.
Caring for roots
33. Here I would like to point out that “a consumerist vision of human
beings, encouraged by the mechanisms of today’s globalized economy, has a
leveling effect on cultures, diminishing the immense variety which is the
heritage of all humanity”.[35] This especially affects young
people, for it has a tendency to “blur what is distinctive about their origins
and backgrounds, and turn them into a new line of malleable goods”.[36] In
order to prevent this process of human impoverishment, there is a need to care
lovingly for our roots, since they are “a fixed point from which we can grow
and meet new challenges”.[37] I urge the young people of the
Amazon region, especially the indigenous peoples, to “take charge of your
roots, because from the roots comes the strength that will make you grow,
flourish and bear fruit”.[38] For those of them who are
baptized, these roots include the history of the people of Israel and the
Church up to our own day. Knowledge of them can bring joy and, above all, a
hope capable of inspiring noble and courageous actions.
34. For centuries, the Amazonian peoples passed down their cultural wisdom
orally, with myths, legends and tales, as in the case of “those primitive
storytellers who traversed the forests bringing stories from town to town,
keeping alive a community which, without the umbilical cord of those stories,
distance and lack of communication would have fragmented and dissolved”.[39] That
is why it is important “to let older people tell their long stories”[40] and
for young people to take the time to drink deeply from that source.
35. Although there is a growing risk that this cultural richness will be
lost; thanks be to God, in recent years some peoples have taken to writing down
their stories and describing the meaning of their customs. In this way, they
themselves can explicitly acknowledge that they possess something more than an
ethnic identity and that they are bearers of precious personal, family and
collective memories. I am pleased to see that people who have lost contact with
their roots are trying to recover their damaged memory. Then too, the
professional sectors have seen a growing sense of Amazonian identity; even for
people who are the descendants of immigrants, the Amazon region has become a
source of artistic, literary, musical and cultural inspiration. The various
arts, and poetry in particular, have found inspiration in its water, its
forests, its seething life, as well as its cultural diversity and its
ecological and social challenges.
Intercultural encounter
36. Like all cultural realities, the cultures of the interior Amazon region
have their limits. Western urban cultures have them as well. Factors like
consumerism, individualism, discrimination, inequality, and any number of
others represent the weaker side of supposedly more developed cultures. The
ethnic groups that, in interaction with nature, developed a cultural treasure
marked by a strong sense of community, readily notice our darker aspects, which
we do not recognize in the midst of our alleged progress. Consequently, it will
prove beneficial to listen to their experience of life.
37. Starting from our roots, let us sit around the common table, a place of
conversation and of shared hopes. In this way our differences, which could seem
like a banner or a wall, can become a bridge. Identity and dialogue are not
enemies. Our own cultural identity is strengthened and enriched as a result of
dialogue with those unlike ourselves. Nor is our authentic identity preserved
by an impoverished isolation. Far be it from me to propose a completely
enclosed, a-historic, static “indigenism” that would reject any kind of
blending (mestizaje). A culture can grow barren when it “becomes
inward-looking, and tries to perpetuate obsolete ways of living by rejecting
any exchange or debate with regard to the truth about man”.[41] That
would be unrealistic, since it is not easy to protect oneself from cultural
invasion. For this reason, interest and concern for the cultural values of the
indigenous groups should be shared by everyone, for their richness is also our
own. If we ourselves do not increase our sense of co-responsibility for the
diversity that embellishes our humanity, we can hardly demand that the groups
from the interior forest be uncritically open to “civilization”.
38. In the Amazon region, even between the different original peoples, it
is possible to develop “intercultural relations where diversity does not mean
threat, and does not justify hierarchies of power of some over others, but
dialogue between different cultural visions, of celebration, of
interrelationship and of revival of hope”.[42]
Endangered cultures, peoples at risk
39. The globalized economy shamelessly damages human, social and cultural
richness. The disintegration of families that comes about as a result of forced
migrations affects the transmission of values, for “the family is and has
always been the social institution that has most contributed to keeping our
cultures alive”.[43] Furthermore, “faced with a colonizing
invasion of means of mass communication”, there is a need to promote for the
original peoples “alternative forms of communication based on their own languages
and cultures” and for “the indigenous subjects themselves [to] become present
in already existing means of communication”.[44]
40. In any project for the Amazon region, “there is a need to respect the
rights of peoples and cultures and to appreciate that the development of a
social group presupposes an historical process which takes place within a
cultural context and demands the constant and active involvement of local
people from within their own culture. Nor can the notion of the quality of life
be imposed from without, for quality of life must be understood within the
world of symbols and customs proper to each human group”.[45] If
the ancestral cultures of the original peoples arose and developed in intimate
contact with the natural environment, then it will be hard for them to remain
unaffected once that environment is damaged.
This leads us to the next dream.
CHAPTER THREE
AN ECOLOGICAL DREAM
41. In a cultural reality like the Amazon region, where there is such a
close relationship between human beings and nature, daily existence is always
cosmic. Setting others free from their forms of bondage surely involves caring
for the environment and defending it,[46] but, even more,
helping the human heart to be open with trust to the God who not only has
created all that exists, but has also given us himself in Jesus Christ. The
Lord, who is the first to care for us, teaches us to care for our brothers and
sisters and the environment which he daily gives us. This is the first ecology
that we need.
In the Amazon region, one better understands the words of Benedict XVI when
he said that, “alongside the ecology of nature, there exists what can be called
a ‘human’ ecology which in turn demands a ‘social’ ecology. All this means that
humanity… must be increasingly conscious of the links between natural ecology,
or respect for nature, and human ecology”.[47] This insistence
that “everything is connected”[48] is particularly true of a
territory like the Amazon region.
42. If the care of people and the care of ecosystems are inseparable, this
becomes especially important in places where “the forest is not a resource to
be exploited; it is a being, or various beings, with which we have to relate”.[49] The
wisdom of the original peoples of the Amazon region “inspires care and respect
for creation, with a clear consciousness of its limits, and prohibits its
abuse. To abuse nature is to abuse our ancestors, our brothers and sisters,
creation and the Creator, and to mortgage the future”.[50] When
the indigenous peoples “remain on their land, they themselves care for it
best”,[51] provided that they do not let themselves be taken in
by the siren songs and the self-serving proposals of power groups. The harm
done to nature affects those peoples in a very direct and verifiable way,
since, in their words, “we are water, air, earth and life of the environment
created by God. For this reason, we demand an end to the mistreatment and
destruction of mother Earth. The land has blood, and it is bleeding; the
multinationals have cut the veins of our mother Earth”.[52]
This dream made of water
43. In the Amazon region, water is queen; the rivers and streams are like
veins, and water determines every form of life:
“There, in the dead of summer, when the last gusts from the East subside in
the still air, the hydrometer takes the place of the thermometer in determining
the weather. Lives depend on a painful alternation of falls and rises in the
level of the great rivers. These always swell in an impressive manner. The
Amazonas overflows its bed and in just a few days raises the level of its
waters… The flooding puts a stop to everything. Caught in the dense foliage of
the igarapies, man awaits with rare stoicism the inexorable end of
that paradoxical winter of elevated temperatures. The receding of the waters is
summer. It is the resurrection of the primitive activity of those who carry on
with the only form of life compatible with the unequal extremes of nature that
make the continuation of any effort impossible”.[53]
44. The shimmering water of the great Amazon River collects and enlivens
all its surroundings:
“Amazonas,
capital of the syllables of water,
father and patriarch, you are
the hidden eternity
of the processes of fertilization;
streams alight upon you like birds”.[54]
capital of the syllables of water,
father and patriarch, you are
the hidden eternity
of the processes of fertilization;
streams alight upon you like birds”.[54]
45. The Amazon is also the spinal column that creates harmony and unity:
“the river does not divide us. It unites us and helps us live together amid
different cultures and languages”.[55] While it is true that in
these lands there are many “Amazon regions”, the principal axis is the great
river, the offspring of many rivers:
“From the high mountain range where the snows are eternal, the water
descends and traces a shimmering line along the ancient skin of the rock: the
Amazon is born. It is born every second. It descends slowly, a sinuous ray of
light, and then swells in the lowland. Rushing upon green spaces, it invents
its own path and expands. Underground waters well up to embrace the water that
falls from the Andes. From the belly of the pure white clouds, swept by the
wind, water falls from heaven. It collects and advances, multiplied in infinite
pathways, bathing the immense plain… This is the Great Amazonia, covering the
humid tropic with its astonishingly thick forest, vast reaches untouched by
man, pulsing with life threading through its deep waters… From the time that
men have lived there, there has arisen from the depths of its waters, and
running through the heart of its forest, a terrible fear: that its life is
slowly but surely coming to an end”.[56]
46. Popular poets, enamoured of its immense beauty, have tried to express
the feelings this river evokes and the life that it bestows as it passes amid a
dance of dolphins, anacondas, trees and canoes. Yet they also lament the
dangers that menace it. Those poets, contemplatives and prophets, help free us
from the technocratic and consumerist paradigm that destroys nature and robs us
of a truly dignified existence:
“The world is suffering from its feet being turned into rubber, its legs
into leather, its body into cloth and its head into steel… The world is
suffering from its trees being turned into rifles, its ploughshares into tanks,
as the image of the sower scattering seed yields to the tank with its
flamethrower, which sows only deserts. Only poetry, with its humble voice, will
be able to save this world”.[57]
The cry of the Amazon region
47. Poetry helps give voice to a painful sensation shared by many of us today.
The inescapable truth is that, as things stand, this way of treating the Amazon
territory spells the end for so much life, for so much beauty, even though
people would like to keep thinking that nothing is happening:
“Those who thought that the river was only a piece of rope,
a plaything, were mistaken.
The river is a thin vein on the face of the earth…
The river is a cord enclosing animals and trees.
If pulled too tight, the river could burst.
It could burst and spatter our faces with water and blood”.[58]
a plaything, were mistaken.
The river is a thin vein on the face of the earth…
The river is a cord enclosing animals and trees.
If pulled too tight, the river could burst.
It could burst and spatter our faces with water and blood”.[58]
48. The equilibrium of our planet also depends on the health of the Amazon
region. Together with the biome of the Congo and Borneo, it contains a dazzling
diversity of woodlands on which rain cycles, climate balance, and a great
variety of living beings also depend. It serves as a great filter of carbon
dioxide, which helps avoid the warming of the earth. For the most part, its
surface is poor in topsoil, with the result that the forest “really grows on
the soil and not from the soil”.[59] When the forest is
eliminated, it is not replaced, because all that is left is a terrain with few
nutrients that then turns into a dry land or one poor in vegetation. This is
quite serious, since the interior of the Amazonian forest contains countless
resources that could prove essential for curing diseases. Its fish, fruit and
other abundant gifts provide rich nutrition for humanity. Furthermore, in an
ecosystem like that of the Amazon region, each part is essential for the
preservation of the whole. The lowlands and marine vegetation also need to be
fertilized by the alluvium of the Amazon. The cry of the Amazon region reaches
everyone because “the conquest and exploitation of resources… has today reached
the point of threatening the environment’s hospitable aspect: the environment
as ‘resource’ risks threatening the environment as ‘home’”.[60] The
interest of a few powerful industries should not be considered more important
than the good of the Amazon region and of humanity as a whole.
49. It is not enough to be concerned about preserving the most visible
species in danger of extinction. There is a crucial need to realize that “the
good functioning of ecosystems also requires fungi, algae, worms, insects,
reptiles and an innumerable variety of microorganisms. Some less numerous
species, although generally unseen, nonetheless play a critical role in
maintaining the equilibrium of a particular place.”[61] This is
easily overlooked when evaluating the environmental impact of economic projects
of extraction, energy, timber and other industries that destroy and pollute. So
too, the water that abounds in the Amazon region is an essential good for human
survival, yet the sources of pollution are increasing.[62]
50. Indeed, in addition to the economic interests of local business persons
and politicians, there also exist “huge global economic interests”.[63] The
answer is not to be found, then, in “internationalizing” the Amazon region,[64] but
rather in a greater sense of responsibility on the part of national
governments. In this regard, “we cannot fail to praise the commitment of
international agencies and civil society organizations which draw public
attention to these issues and offer critical cooperation, employing legitimate
means of pressure, to ensure that each government carries out its proper and
inalienable responsibility to preserve its country’s environment and natural
resources, without capitulating to spurious local or international interests”.[65]
51. To protect the Amazon region, it is good to combine ancestral wisdom
with contemporary technical knowledge, always working for a sustainable
management of the land while also preserving the lifestyle and value systems of
those who live there.[66] They, particularly the original
peoples, have a right to receive – in addition to basic education – thorough
and straightforward information about projects, their extent and their
consequences and risks, in order to be able to relate that information to their
own interests and their own knowledge of the place, and thus to give or
withhold their consent, or to propose alternatives.[67]
52. The powerful are never satisfied with the profits they make, and the
resources of economic power greatly increase as a result of scientific and
technological advances. For this reason, all of us should insist on the urgent
need to establish “a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure
the protection of ecosystems… otherwise, the new power structures based on the
techno-economic paradigm may overwhelm not only our politics, but also freedom
and justice”.[68] If God calls us to listen both to the cry of
the poor and that of the earth,[69] then for us, “the cry of the Amazon region
to the Creator is similar to the cry of God’s people in Egypt (cf. Ex 3:7).
It is a cry of slavery and abandonment pleading for freedom”.[70]
The prophecy of contemplation
53. Frequently we let our consciences be deadened, since “distractions
constantly dull our realization of just how limited and finite our world really
is”.[71] From a superficial standpoint, we might well think
that “things do not look that serious, and the planet could continue as it is
for some time. Such evasiveness serves as a license to carrying on with our
present lifestyles and models of production and consumption. This is the way
human beings contrive to feed their self-destructive vices: trying not to see
them, trying not to acknowledge them, delaying the important decisions and
pretending that nothing will happen”.[72]
54. In addition, I would also observe that each distinct species has a
value in itself, yet “each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant
and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see,
because they have been lost forever. The great majority become extinct for
reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no
longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to
us. We have no such right”.[73]
55. From the original peoples, we can learn to contemplate the
Amazon region and not simply analyze it, and thus appreciate this precious
mystery that transcends us. We can love it, not simply use it,
with the result that love can awaken a deep and sincere interest. Even more, we
can feel intimately a part of it and not only defend it; then
the Amazon region will once more become like a mother to us. For “we do not
look at the world from without but from within, conscious of the bonds with
which the Father has linked us to all beings”.[74]
56. Let us awaken our God-given aesthetic and contemplative sense that so
often we let languish. Let us remember that “if someone has not learned to stop
and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats
everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple”.[75] On
the other hand, if we enter into communion with the forest, our voices will
easily blend with its own and become a prayer: “as we rest in the shade of an
ancient eucalyptus, our prayer for light joins in the song of the eternal
foliage”.[76] This interior conversion will enable us to weep
for the Amazon region and to join in its cry to the Lord.
57. Jesus said: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of
them is forgotten in God’s sight” (Lk 12:6). God our Father, who
created each being in the universe with infinite love, calls us to be his means
for hearing the cry of the Amazon region. If we respond to this heartrending
plea, it will become clear that the creatures of the Amazon region are not
forgotten by our heavenly Father. For Christians, Jesus himself cries out to us
from their midst, “because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to
himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of
the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now
imbued with his radiant presence”.[77] For all these reasons,
we believers encounter in the Amazon region a theological locus, a space where
God himself reveals himself and summons his sons and daughters.
Ecological education and habits
58. In this regard, we can take one step further and note that an integral
ecology cannot be content simply with fine-tuning technical questions or
political, juridical and social decisions. The best ecology always has an
educational dimension that can encourage the development of new habits in
individuals and groups. Sadly, many of those living in the Amazon region have
acquired habits typical of the larger cities, where consumerism and the culture
of waste are already deeply rooted. A sound and sustainable ecology, one
capable of bringing about change, will not develop unless people are changed,
unless they are encouraged to opt for another style of life, one less greedy
and more serene, more respectful and less anxious, more fraternal.
59. Indeed, “the emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs
things to buy, own and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the
limits imposed by reality… Our concern cannot be limited merely to the threat
of extreme weather events, but must also extend to the catastrophic
consequences of social unrest. Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above
all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence
and mutual destruction”.[78]
60. The Church, with her broad spiritual experience, her renewed
appreciation of the value of creation, her concern for justice, her option for
the poor, her educational tradition and her history of becoming incarnate in so
many different cultures throughout the world, also desires to contribute to the
protection and growth of the Amazon region.
This leads to the next dream, which I would like to share more directly
with the Catholic pastors and faithful.
CHAPTER 4
AN ECCLESIAL DREAM
61. The Church is called to journey alongside the people of the Amazon
region. In Latin America, this journey found privileged expression at the
Bishops’ Conference in Medellin (1968) and its application to the Amazon region
at Santarem (1972),[79] followed by Puebla (1979), Santo
Domingo (1992) and Aparecida (2007). The journey continues, and missionary
efforts, if they are to develop a Church with an Amazonian face, need to grow
in a culture of encounter towards “a multifaceted harmony”.[80] But
for this incarnation of the Church and the Gospel to be possible, the great
missionary proclamation must continue to resound.
The message that needs to be heard in the Amazon region
62. Recognizing the many problems and needs that cry out from
the heart of the Amazon region, we can respond beginning with organizations,
technical resources, opportunities for discussion and political programmes: all
these can be part of the solution. Yet as Christians, we cannot set aside the
call to faith that we have received from the Gospel. In our desire to struggle
side by side with everyone, we are not ashamed of Jesus Christ. Those who have
encountered him, those who live as his friends and identify with his message,
must inevitably speak of him and bring to others his offer of new life: “Woe to
me if I do not preach the Gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).
63. An authentic option for the poor and the abandoned, while motivating us
to liberate them from material poverty and to defend their rights, also
involves inviting them to a friendship with the Lord that can elevate and
dignify them. How sad it would be if they were to receive from us a body of
teachings or a moral code, but not the great message of salvation, the
missionary appeal that speaks to the heart and gives meaning to everything else
in life. Nor can we be content with a social message. If we devote our lives to
their service, to working for the justice and dignity that they deserve, we
cannot conceal the fact that we do so because we see Christ in them and because
we acknowledge the immense dignity that they have received from God, the Father
who loves them with boundless love.
64. They have a right to hear the Gospel, and above all that first
proclamation, the kerygma, which is “the principal proclamation,
the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we
must announce one way or another”.[81] It proclaims a God who
infinitely loves every man and woman and has revealed this love fully in Jesus
Christ, crucified for us and risen in our lives. I would ask that you re-read
the brief summary of this “great message” found in Chapter Four of the
Exhortation Christus Vivit. That message, expressed in a variety of
ways, must constantly resound in the Amazon region. Without that impassioned
proclamation, every ecclesial structure would become just another NGO and we
would not follow the command given us by Christ: “Go into all the world and
preach the Gospel to the whole creation” (Mk 16:15).
65. Any project for growth in the Christian life needs to be centred
continually on this message, for “all Christian formation consists of entering
more deeply into the kerygma”.[82] The fundamental response to
this message, when it leads to a personal encounter with the Lord, is fraternal
charity, “the new commandment, the first and the greatest of the commandments,
and the one that best identifies us as Christ’s disciples”.[83] Indeed,
the kerygma and fraternal charity constitute the great synthesis of the whole
content of the Gospel, to be proclaimed unceasingly in the Amazon region. That
is what shaped the lives of the great evangelizers of Latin America, like Saint
Turibius of Mongrovejo or Saint Joseph of Anchieta.
Inculturation
66. As she perseveres in the preaching of the kerygma, the Church also
needs to grow in the Amazon region. In doing so, she constantly reshapes her
identity through listening and dialogue with the people, the realities and the
history of the lands in which she finds herself. In this way, she is able to
engage increasingly in a necessary process of inculturation that rejects
nothing of the goodness that already exists in Amazonian cultures, but brings
it to fulfilment in the light of the Gospel.[84] Nor does she
scorn the richness of Christian wisdom handed down through the centuries,
presuming to ignore the history in which God has worked in many ways. For the
Church has a varied face, “not only in terms of space… but also of time”.[85] Here
we see the authentic Tradition of the Church, which is not a static deposit or
a museum piece, but the root of a constantly growing tree.[86] This
millennial Tradition bears witness to God’s work in the midst of his people and
“is called to keep the flame alive rather than to guard its ashes”.[87]
67. Saint John Paul II taught that in proposing the Gospel message, “the
Church does not intend to deny the autonomy of culture. On the contrary, she
has the greatest respect for it”, since culture “is not only an object of
redemption and elevation but can also play a role of mediation and
cooperation”.[88] Addressing indigenous peoples of America, he
reminded them that “a faith that does not become culture is a faith not fully
accepted, not fully reflected upon, not faithfully lived”.[89] Cultural
challenges invite the Church to maintain “a watchful and critical attitude”,
while at the same time showing “confident attention”.[90]
68. Here I would reiterate what I stated about inculturation in the
Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, based on the conviction
that “grace supposes culture, and God’s gift becomes flesh in the culture of
those who receive it”.[91] We can see that it involves a double
movement. On the one hand, a fruitful process takes place when the Gospel takes
root in a given place, for “whenever a community receives the message of
salvation, the Holy Spirit enriches its culture with the transforming power of
the Gospel”.[92] On the other hand, the Church herself
undergoes a process of reception that enriches her with the fruits of what the
Spirit has already mysteriously sown in that culture. In this way, “the Holy
Spirit adorns the Church, showing her new aspects of revelation and giving her
a new face”.[93] In the end, this means allowing and
encouraging the inexhaustible riches of the Gospel to be preached “in
categories proper to each culture, creating a new synthesis with that
particular culture”.[94]
69. “The history of the Church shows that Christianity does not have simply
one cultural expression”,[95] and “we would not do justice to
the logic of the incarnation if we thought of Christianity as monocultural and
monotonous”.[96] There is a risk that evangelizers who come to
a particular area may think that they must not only communicate the Gospel but
also the culture in which they grew up, failing to realize that it is not
essential “to impose a specific cultural form, no matter how beautiful or ancient
it may be”.[97] What is needed is courageous openness to the
novelty of the Spirit, who is always able to create something new with the
inexhaustible riches of Jesus Christ. Indeed, “inculturation commits the Church
to a difficult but necessary journey”.[98] True, “this is
always a slow process and that we can be overly fearful”, ending up as “mere
onlookers as the Church gradually stagnates”.[99] But let us be
fearless; let us not clip the wings of the Holy Spirit.
Paths of inculturation in the Amazon region
70. For the Church to achieve a renewed inculturation of the Gospel in the
Amazon region, she needs to listen to its ancestral wisdom, listen once more to
the voice of its elders, recognize the values present in the way of life of the
original communities, and recover the rich stories of its peoples. In the
Amazon region, we have inherited great riches from the pre-Columbian cultures.
These include “openness to the action of God, a sense of gratitude for the
fruits of the earth, the sacred character of human life and esteem for the
family, a sense of solidarity and shared responsibility in common work, the
importance of worship, belief in a life beyond this earth, and many other
values”.[100]
71. In this regard, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Region
express the authentic quality of life as “good living”. This involves personal,
familial, communal and cosmic harmony and finds expression in a communitarian
approach to existence, the ability to find joy and fulfillment in an austere
and simple life, and a responsible care of nature that preserves resources for
future generations. The aboriginal peoples give us the example of a joyful
sobriety and in this sense, “they have much to teach us”.[101] They
know how to be content with little; they enjoy God’s little gifts without
accumulating great possessions; they do not destroy things needlessly; they
care for ecosystems and they recognize that the earth, while serving as a
generous source of support for their life, also has a maternal dimension that evokes
respect and tender love. All these things should be valued and taken up in the
process of evangelization.[102]
72. While working for them and with them, we are called “to be
their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the
mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them”.[103] Those
who live in cities need to appreciate this wisdom and to allow themselves to be
“re-educated” in the face of frenzied consumerism and urban isolation. The
Church herself can be a means of assisting this cultural retrieval through a
precious synthesis with the preaching of the Gospel. She can also become a sign
and means of charity, inasmuch as urban communities must be missionary not only
to those in their midst but also to the poor who, driven by dire need, arrive
from the interior and are welcomed. In the same way, these communities can stay
close to young migrants and help them integrate into the city without falling
prey to its networks of depravity. All these forms of ecclesial outreach, born
of love, are valuable contributions to a process of inculturation.
73. Inculturation elevates and fulfills. Certainly, we should
esteem the indigenous mysticism that sees the interconnection and
interdependence of the whole of creation, the mysticism of gratuitousness that
loves life as a gift, the mysticism of a sacred wonder before nature and all
its forms of life.
At the same time, though, we are called to turn this relationship with God
present in the cosmos into an increasingly personal relationship with a “Thou”
who sustains our lives and wants to give them a meaning, a “Thou” who knows us
and loves us:
“Shadows float from me, dead wood.
But the star is born without reproach
over the expert hands of this child,
that conquer the waters and the night.
It has to be enough for me to know
that you know me
completely, from before my days”.[104]
But the star is born without reproach
over the expert hands of this child,
that conquer the waters and the night.
It has to be enough for me to know
that you know me
completely, from before my days”.[104]
74. Similarly, a relationship with Jesus Christ, true God and true man,
liberator and redeemer, is not inimical to the markedly cosmic worldview that
characterizes the indigenous peoples, since he is also the Risen Lord who
permeates all things.[105] In Christian experience, “all the
creatures of the material universe find their true meaning in the incarnate
Word, for the Son of God has incorporated in his person part of the material
world, planting in it a seed of definitive transformation”.[106] He
is present in a glorious and mysterious way in the river, the trees, the fish
and the wind, as the Lord who reigns in creation without ever losing his
transfigured wounds, while in the Eucharist he takes up the elements of this
world and confers on all things the meaning of the paschal gift.
Social and spiritual inculturation
75. Given the situation of poverty and neglect experienced by
so many inhabitants of the Amazon region, inculturation will necessarily have a
markedly social cast, accompanied by a resolute defence of human rights; in
this way it will reveal the face of Christ, who “wished with special tenderness
to be identified with the weak and the poor”.[107] Indeed,
“from the heart of the Gospel we see the profound connection between
evangelization and human advancement”.[108] For Christian
communities, this entails a clear commitment to the justice of God’s kingdom
through work for the advancement of those who have been “discarded”. It follows
that a suitable training of pastoral workers in the Church’s social doctrine is
most important.
76. At the same time, the inculturation of the Gospel in the Amazon region
must better integrate the social and the spiritual, so that the poor do not
have to look outside the Church for a spirituality that responds to their
deepest yearnings. This does not mean an alienating and individualistic
religiosity that would silence social demands for a more dignified life, but
neither does it mean ignoring the transcendent and spiritual dimension, as if
material development alone were sufficient for human beings. We are thus called
not merely to join those two things, but to connect them at a deeper level. In
this way, we will reveal the true beauty of the Gospel, which fully humanizes,
integrally dignifies persons and peoples, and brings fulfilment to every heart
and the whole of life.
Starting points for an Amazonian holiness
77. This will give rise to witnesses of holiness with an Amazonian face,
not imitations of models imported from other places. A holiness born of
encounter and engagement, contemplation and service, receptive solitude and
life in community, cheerful sobriety and the struggle for justice. A holiness
attained by “each individual in his or her own way”,[109] but
also by peoples, where grace becomes incarnate and shines forth with
distinctive features. Let us imagine a holiness with Amazonian features, called
to challenge the universal Church.
78. A process of inculturation involving not only individuals but also
peoples demands a respectful and understanding love for those peoples. This
process has already begun in much of the Amazon region. More than forty years
ago, the bishops of the Peruvian Amazon pointed out that in many of the groups
present in that region, those to be evangelized, shaped by a varied and changing
culture, have been “initially evangelized”. As a result, they possess “certain
features of popular Catholicism that, perhaps originally introduced by pastoral
workers, are now something that the people have made their own, even changing
their meaning and handing them down from generation to generation”.[110] Let
us not be quick to describe as superstition or paganism certain religious
practices that arise spontaneously from the life of peoples. Rather, we ought
to know how to distinguish the wheat growing alongside the tares, for “popular
piety can enable us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a
culture and is constantly passed on”.[111]
79. It is possible to take up an indigenous symbol in some way, without
necessarily considering it as idolatry. A myth charged with spiritual meaning
can be used to advantage and not always considered a pagan error. Some
religious festivals have a sacred meaning and are occasions for gathering and
fraternity, albeit in need of a gradual process of purification or maturation.
A missionary of souls will try to discover the legitimate needs and concerns
that seek an outlet in at times imperfect, partial or mistaken religious
expressions, and will attempt to respond to them with an inculturated spirituality.
80. Such a spirituality will certainly be centred on the one God and Lord,
while at the same time in contact with the daily needs of people who strive for
a dignified life, who want to enjoy life’s blessings, to find peace and
harmony, to resolve family problems, to care for their illnesses, and to see
their children grow up happy. The greatest danger would be to prevent them from
encountering Christ by presenting him as an enemy of joy or as someone
indifferent to human questions and difficulties.[112] Nowadays,
it is essential to show that holiness takes nothing away from our “energy,
vitality or joy”.[113]
The inculturation of the liturgy
81. The inculturation of Christian spirituality in the cultures of the
original peoples can benefit in a particular way from the sacraments, since
they unite the divine and the cosmic, grace and creation. In the Amazon region,
the sacraments should not be viewed in discontinuity with creation. They “are a
privileged way in which nature is taken up by God to become a means of
mediating supernatural life”.[114] They are the fulfillment of
creation, in which nature is elevated to become a locus and instrument of
grace, enabling us “to embrace the world on a different plane”.[115]
82. In the Eucharist, God, “in the culmination of the mystery of the
Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter”.
The Eucharist “joins heaven and earth; it embraces and penetrates all
creation”.[116] For this reason, it can be a “motivation for
our concerns for the environment, directing us to be stewards of all creation”.[117] In
this sense, “encountering God does not mean fleeing from this world or turning
our back on nature”.[118] It means that we can take up into the
liturgy many elements proper to the experience of indigenous peoples in their
contact with nature, and respect native forms of expression in song, dance,
rituals, gestures and symbols. The Second Vatican Council called for this
effort to inculturate the liturgy among indigenous peoples;[119] over
fifty years have passed and we still have far to go along these lines.[120]
83. On Sunday, “Christian spirituality incorporates the value of relaxation
and festivity. [Nowadays] we tend to demean contemplative rest as something
unproductive and unnecessary, but this is to do away with the very thing which
is most important about work: its meaning. We are called to include in our work
a dimension of receptivity and gratuity”.[121] Aboriginal
peoples are familiar with this gratuity and this healthy contemplative leisure.
Our celebrations should help them experience this in the Sunday liturgy and
encounter the light of God’s word and the Eucharist, which illumines our daily
existence.
84. The sacraments reveal and communicate the God who is close and who
comes with mercy to heal and strengthen his children. Consequently, they should
be accessible, especially for the poor, and must never be refused for financial
reasons. Nor is there room, in the presence of the poor and forgotten of the
Amazon region, for a discipline that excludes and turns people away, for in
that way they end up being discarded by a Church that has become a toll-house.
Rather, “in such difficult situations of need, the Church must be particularly
concerned to offer understanding, comfort and acceptance, rather than imposing
straightaway a set of rules that only lead people to feel judged and abandoned
by the very Mother called to show them God’s mercy”.[122] For the Church, mercy
can become a mere sentimental catchword unless it finds concrete expression in
her pastoral outreach.[123]
Inculturation of forms of ministry
85. Inculturation should also be increasingly reflected in an
incarnate form of ecclesial organization and ministry. If we are to inculturate
spirituality, holiness and the Gospel itself, how can we not consider an
inculturation of the ways we structure and carry out ecclesial ministries? The
pastoral presence of the Church in the Amazon region is uneven, due in part to
the vast expanse of the territory, its many remote places, its broad cultural
diversity, its grave social problems, and the preference of some peoples to
live in isolation. We cannot remain unconcerned; a specific and courageous
response is required of the Church.
86. Efforts need to be made to configure ministry in such a way that it is
at the service of a more frequent celebration of the Eucharist, even in the
remotest and most isolated communities. At Aparecida, all were asked to heed
the lament of the many Amazonian communities “deprived of the Sunday Eucharist for
long periods of time”.[124] There is also a need for ministers
who can understand Amazonian sensibilities and cultures from within.
87. The way of shaping priestly life and ministry is not monolithic; it
develops distinctive traits in different parts of the world. This is why it is
important to determine what is most specific to a priest, what cannot be
delegated. The answer lies in the sacrament of Holy Orders, which configures
him to Christ the priest. The first conclusion, then, is that the exclusive character
received in Holy Orders qualifies the priest alone to preside at the Eucharist.[125] That
is his particular, principal and non-delegable function. There are those who
think that what distinguishes the priest is power, the fact that he is the
highest authority in the community. Yet Saint John Paul II explained that,
although the priesthood is considered “hierarchical”, this function is not
meant to be superior to the others, but rather is “totally ordered to the
holiness of Christ’s members”.[126] When the priest is said to
be a sign of “Christ the head”, this refers principally to the fact that Christ
is the source of all grace: he is the head of the Church because “he has the
power of pouring out grace upon all the members of the Church”.[127]
88. The priest is a sign of that head and wellspring of grace above all
when he celebrates the Eucharist, the source and summit of the entire Christian
life.[128] That is his great power, a power that can only be
received in the sacrament of Holy Orders. For this reason, only the priest can
say: “This is my body”. There are other words too, that he
alone can speak: “I absolve you from your sins”. Because sacramental
forgiveness is at the service of a worthy celebration of the Eucharist. These
two sacraments lie at the heart of the priest’s exclusive identity.[129]
89. In the specific circumstances of the Amazon region, particularly in its
forests and more remote places, a way must be found to ensure this priestly
ministry. The laity can proclaim God’s word, teach, organize communities,
celebrate certain sacraments, seek different ways to express popular devotion
and develop the multitude of gifts that the Spirit pours out in their midst.
But they need the celebration of the Eucharist because it “makes the Church”.[130] We
can even say that “no Christian community is built up which does not grow from
and hinge on the celebration of the most holy Eucharist”.[131] If
we are truly convinced that this is the case, then every effort should be made
to ensure that the Amazonian peoples do not lack this food of new life and the
sacrament of forgiveness.
90. This urgent need leads me to urge all bishops, especially those in
Latin America, not only to promote prayer for priestly vocations, but also to
be more generous in encouraging those who display a missionary vocation to opt
for the Amazon region.[132] At the same time, it is appropriate
that the structure and content of both initial and ongoing priestly formation
be thoroughly revised, so that priests can acquire the attitudes and abilities
demanded by dialogue with Amazonian cultures. This formation must be
preeminently pastoral and favour the development of priestly mercy.[133]
Communities filled with life
91. The Eucharist is also the great sacrament that signifies and realizes
the Church’s unity.[134] It is celebrated “so that
from being strangers, dispersed and indifferent to each another, we may become
united, equals and friends”.[135] The one who presides at the
Eucharist must foster communion, which is not just any unity, but one that
welcomes the abundant variety of gifts and charisms that the Spirit pours out
upon the community.
92. The Eucharist, then, as source and summit, requires the development of
that rich variety. Priests are necessary, but this does not mean that permanent
deacons (of whom there should be many more in the Amazon region), religious
women and lay persons cannot regularly assume important responsibilities for
the growth of communities, and perform those functions ever more effectively
with the aid of a suitable accompaniment.
93. Consequently, it is not simply a question of facilitating a greater
presence of ordained ministers who can celebrate the Eucharist. That would be a
very narrow aim, were we not also to strive to awaken new life in communities.
We need to promote an encounter with God’s word and growth in holiness through
various kinds of lay service that call for a process of education – biblical,
doctrinal, spiritual and practical – and a variety of programmes of ongoing
formation.
94. A Church of Amazonian features requires the stable presence of mature
and lay leaders endowed with authority[136] and familiar with
the languages, cultures, spiritual experience and communal way of life in the
different places, but also open to the multiplicity of gifts that the Holy
Spirit bestows on every one. For wherever there is a particular need, he has
already poured out the charisms that can meet it. This requires the Church to
be open to the Spirit’s boldness, to trust in, and concretely to permit, the
growth of a specific ecclesial culture that is distinctively lay. The
challenges in the Amazon region demand of the Church a special effort to be
present at every level, and this can only be possible through the vigorous,
broad and active involvement of the laity.
95. Many consecrated persons have devoted their energies and a good part of
their lives in service to the Kingdom of God in Amazonia. The consecrated life,
as capable of dialogue, synthesis, incarnation and prophecy, has a special
place in this diverse and harmonious configuration of the Church in the Amazon
region. But it needs a new impetus to inculturation, one that would combine
creativity, missionary boldness, sensitivity and the strength typical of
community life.
96. Base communities, when able to combine the defence of social rights
with missionary proclamation and spirituality, have been authentic experiences
of synodality in the Church’s journey of evangelization in the Amazon region.
In many cases they “have helped form Christians committed to their faith,
disciples and missionaries of the Lord, as is attested by the generous
commitment of so many of their members, even to the point of shedding their
blood”.[137]
97. I encourage the growth of the collaborative efforts being made through
the Pan Amazonian Ecclesial Network and other associations to implement the
proposal of Aparecida to “establish a collaborative ministry among the local
churches of the various South American countries in the Amazon basin, with
differentiated priorities”.[138] This applies particularly to
relations between Churches located on the borders between nations.
98. Finally, I would note that we cannot always plan projects with stable
communities in mind, because the Amazonian region sees a great deal of internal
mobility, constant and frequently pendular migration; “the region has
effectively become a migration corridor”.[139] “Transhumancein
the Amazon has not been well understood or sufficiently examined from the
pastoral standpoint”.[140] Consequently, thought should be
given to itinerant missionary teams and “support provided for the presence and
mobility of consecrated men and women closest to those who are most
impoverished and excluded”.[141] This is also a challenge for
our urban communities, which ought to come up with creative and generous ways,
especially on the outskirts, to be close and welcoming to families and young
people who arrive from the interior.
The strength and gift of women
99. In the Amazon region, there are communities that have long preserved
and handed on the faith even though no priest has come their way, even for
decades. This could happen because of the presence of strong and generous women
who, undoubtedly called and prompted by the Holy Spirit, baptized, catechized,
prayed and acted as missionaries. For centuries, women have kept the Church
alive in those places through their remarkable devotion and deep faith. Some of
them, speaking at the Synod, moved us profoundly by their testimony.
100. This summons us to broaden our vision, lest we restrict our
understanding of the Church to her functional structures. Such a reductionism
would lead us to believe that women would be granted a greater status and
participation in the Church only if they were admitted to Holy Orders. But that
approach would in fact narrow our vision; it would lead us to clericalize
women, diminish the great value of what they have already accomplished, and
subtly make their indispensable contribution less effective.
101. Jesus Christ appears as the Spouse of the community that celebrates
the Eucharist through the figure of a man who presides as a sign of the one
Priest. This dialogue between the Spouse and his Bride, which arises in
adoration and sanctifies the community, should not trap us in partial
conceptions of power in the Church. The Lord chose to reveal his power and his
love through two human faces: the face of his divine Son made man and the face
of a creature, a woman, Mary. Women make their contribution to the Church in a
way that is properly theirs, by making present the tender strength of Mary, the
Mother. As a result, we do not limit ourselves to a functional approach, but
enter instead into the inmost structure of the Church. In this way, we will
fundamentally realize why, without women, the Church breaks down, and how many
communities in the Amazon would have collapsed, had women not been there to
sustain them, keep them together and care for them. This shows the kind of
power that is typically theirs.
102. We must keep encouraging those simple and straightforward gifts that
enabled women in the Amazon region to play so active a role in society, even
though communities now face many new and unprecedented threats. The present
situation requires us to encourage the emergence of other forms of service and
charisms that are proper to women and responsive to the specific needs of the
peoples of the Amazon region at this moment in history.
103 In a synodal Church, those women who in fact have a central part to
play in Amazonian communities should have access to positions, including
ecclesial services, that do not entail Holy Orders and that can better signify
the role that is theirs. Here it should be noted that these services entail
stability, public recognition and a commission from the bishop. This would also
allow women to have a real and effective impact on the organization, the most
important decisions and the direction of communities, while continuing to do so
in a way that reflects their womanhood.
Expanding horizons beyond conflicts
104. It often happens that in particular places pastoral workers envisage
very different solutions to the problems they face, and consequently propose
apparently opposed forms of ecclesial organization. When this occurs, it is
probable that the real response to the challenges of evangelization lies in
transcending the two approaches and finding other, better ways, perhaps not yet
even imagined. Conflict is overcome at a higher level, where each group can join
the other in a new reality, while remaining faithful to itself. Everything is
resolved “on a higher plane and preserves what is valid and useful on both
sides”.[142] Otherwise, conflict traps us; “we lose our
perspective, our horizons shrink and reality itself begins to fall apart”.[143]
105. In no way does this mean relativizing problems, fleeing from them or
letting things stay as they are. Authentic solutions are never found by
dampening boldness, shirking concrete demands or assigning blame to others. On
the contrary, solutions are found by “overflow”, that is, by transcending the
contraposition that limits our vision and recognizing a greater gift that God
is offering. From that new gift, accepted with boldness and generosity, from
that unexpected gift which awakens a new and greater creativity, there will
pour forth as from an overflowing fountain the answers that contraposition did
not allow us to see. In its earliest days, the Christian faith spread
remarkably in accordance with this way of thinking, which enabled it, from its
Jewish roots, to take shape in the Greco-Roman cultures, and in time to acquire
distinctive forms. Similarly, in this historical moment, the Amazon region
challenges us to transcend limited perspectives and “pragmatic” solutions mired
in partial approaches, in order to seek paths of inculturation that are broader
and bolder.
Ecumenical and interreligious coexistence
106. In an Amazonian region characterized by many religions, we believers
need to find occasions to speak to one another and to act together for the
common good and the promotion of the poor. This has nothing to do with watering
down or concealing our deepest convictions when we encounter others who think
differently than ourselves. If we believe that the Holy Spirit can work amid
differences, then we will try to let ourselves be enriched by that insight,
while embracing it from the core of our own convictions and our own identity.
For the deeper, stronger and richer that identity is, the more we will be
capable of enriching others with our own proper contribution.
107. We Catholics possess in sacred Scripture a treasure that other
religions do not accept, even though at times they may read it with interest
and even esteem some of its teachings. We attempt to do something similar with
the sacred texts of other religions and religious communities, which contain
“precepts and doctrines that... often reflect a ray of that truth which
enlightens all men and women”.[144] We also possess a great
treasure in the seven sacraments, which some Christian communities do not
accept in their totality or in the same sense. At the same time that we believe
firmly in Jesus as the sole Redeemer of the world, we cultivate a deep devotion
to his Mother. Even though we know that this is not the case with all Christian
confessions, we feel it our duty to share with the Amazon region the treasure
of that warm, maternal love which we ourselves have received. In fact, I will
conclude this Exhortation with a few words addressed to Mary.
108. None of this needs to create enmity between us. In a true spirit of
dialogue, we grow in our ability to grasp the significance of what others say
and do, even if we cannot accept it as our own conviction. In this way, it
becomes possible to be frank and open about our beliefs, while continuing to
discuss, to seek points of contact, and above all, to work and struggle
together for the good of the Amazon region. The strength of what unites all of
us as Christians is supremely important. We can be so attentive to what divides
us that at times we no longer appreciate or value what unites us. And what
unites us is what lets us remain in this world without being swallowed up by
its immanence, its spiritual emptiness, its complacent selfishness, its
consumerist and self-destructive individualism.
109. All of us, as Christians, are united by faith in God, the Father who
gives us life and loves us so greatly. We are united by faith in Jesus Christ,
the one Saviour, who set us free by his precious blood and his glorious resurrection.
We are united by our desire for his word that guides our steps. We are united
by the fire of the Spirit, who sends us forth on mission. We are united by the
new commandment that Jesus left us, by the pursuit of the civilization of love
and by passion for the kingdom that the Lord calls us to build with him. We are
united by the struggle for peace and justice. We are united by the conviction
that not everything ends with this life, but that we are called to the heavenly
banquet, where God will wipe away every tear and take up all that we did for
those who suffer.
110. All this unites us. How can we not struggle together? How can we not
pray and work together, side by side, to defend the poor of the Amazon region,
to show the sacred countenance of the Lord, and to care for his work of
creation?
CONCLUSION
MOTHER OF THE AMAZON REGION
111. After sharing a few of my dreams, I encourage everyone to advance
along concrete paths that can allow the reality of the Amazon region to be
transformed and set free from the evils that beset it. Let us now lift our gaze
to Mary. The Mother whom Christ gave us is also the one Mother of all, who
reveals herself in the Amazon region in distinct ways. We know that “the
indigenous peoples have a vital encounter with Jesus Christ in many ways; but
the path of Mary has contributed greatly to this encounter”.[145] Faced
with the marvel of the Amazon region, which we discovered ever more fully
during the preparation and celebration of the Synod, I consider it best to
conclude this Exhortation by turning to her:
Mother of life,
in your maternal womb Jesus took flesh,
the Lord of all that exists.
Risen, he transfigured you by his light
and made you the Queen of all creation.
For that reason, we ask you, Mary, to reign
in the beating heart of Amazonia.
in your maternal womb Jesus took flesh,
the Lord of all that exists.
Risen, he transfigured you by his light
and made you the Queen of all creation.
For that reason, we ask you, Mary, to reign
in the beating heart of Amazonia.
Show yourself the Mother of all creatures,
in the beauty of the flowers, the rivers,
the great river that courses through it
and all the life pulsing in its forests.
Tenderly care for this explosion of beauty.
in the beauty of the flowers, the rivers,
the great river that courses through it
and all the life pulsing in its forests.
Tenderly care for this explosion of beauty.
Ask Jesus to pour out all his love
on the men and women who dwell there,
that they may know how to appreciate and care for it.
on the men and women who dwell there,
that they may know how to appreciate and care for it.
Bring your Son to birth in their hearts,
so that he can shine forth in the Amazon region,
in its peoples and in its cultures,
by the light of his word,
by his consoling love,
by his message of fraternity and justice.
so that he can shine forth in the Amazon region,
in its peoples and in its cultures,
by the light of his word,
by his consoling love,
by his message of fraternity and justice.
And at every Eucharist,
may all this awe and wonder be lifted up
to the glory of the Father.
may all this awe and wonder be lifted up
to the glory of the Father.
Mother, look upon the poor of the Amazon region,
for their home is being destroyed by petty interests.
How much pain and misery,
how much neglect and abuse there is
in this blessed land
overflowing with life!
for their home is being destroyed by petty interests.
How much pain and misery,
how much neglect and abuse there is
in this blessed land
overflowing with life!
Touch the hearts of the powerful,
for, even though we sense that the hour is late,
you call us to save
what is still alive.
for, even though we sense that the hour is late,
you call us to save
what is still alive.
Mother whose heart is pierced,
who yourself suffer in your mistreated sons and daughters,
and in the wounds inflicted on nature,
reign in the Amazon,
together with your Son.
Reign so that no one else can claim lordship
over the handiwork of God.
who yourself suffer in your mistreated sons and daughters,
and in the wounds inflicted on nature,
reign in the Amazon,
together with your Son.
Reign so that no one else can claim lordship
over the handiwork of God.
We trust in you, Mother of life.
Do not abandon us
in this dark hour.
Amen.
Do not abandon us
in this dark hour.
Amen.
Given in Rome, at the Cathedral of Saint John Lateran, on 2 February, the
Feast of the Presention of the Lord,in the year 2020, the seventh of my
Pontificate.
FRANCIS
[00189-EN.01] [Original text: Spanish]
___________________________
[1] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 49: AAS
107 (2015), 866.
[2] Instrumentum Laboris, 45
[3] ANA VARELA TAFUR, “Timareo”, in Lo que no veo en visiones,
Lima, 1992.
[4] JORGE VEGA MÁRQUEZ, “Amazonia solitária”, in Poesía
obrera, Cobija-Pando-Bolivia, 2009, 39.
[5] RED ECLESIAL PANAMAZÓNICA (REPAM), Brazil, Síntesis del
aporte al Sínodo, 120; cf. Instrumentum Laboris, 45.
[6] Address to Young People, São Paulo, Brazil (10 May 2007), 2.
[7] Cf. ALBERTO C. ARAÚJO, “Imaginario amazónico”, in Amazonia
real: amazoniareal.com.br (29 January 2014).
[8] SAINT PAUL VI, Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio (26
March 1967), 57: AAS 59 (1967), 285.
[9] SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Social
Sciences (27 April 2001), 4: AAS 93 (2001), 600.
[10] Cf. Instrumentum Laboris, 41.
[11] FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN
BISHOPS, Aparecida Document (29 June 2007), 473.
[12] RAMÓN IRIBERTEGUI, Amazonas: El hombre y el caucho, ed.
Vicariato Apostólico de Puerto Ayacucho-Venezuela, Monografía n. 4, Caracas,
1987, 307ff.
[13] Cf. “AMARÍLIS TUPIASSÚ, “Amazônia, das travessias lusitanas à
literatura de até agora”, in Estudos Avançados vol. 19, n. 53,
São Paulo (Jan./Apr. 2005): “In effect, after the end of the first
colonization, the Amazon region continued to be an area subject to age-old
greed, now under new rhetorical guises… on the part of “civilizing” agents who
did not even need to be personified in order to generate and multiply the new
faces of the old decimation, now through a slow death”.
[14] BISHOPS OF THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON REGION, Carta al Pueblo de
Dios, Santarem-Brazil (6 July 2012).
[15] SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Message for the 1998 World Day of Peace,
3: AAS 90 (1998), 150.
[16] THIRD GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN
BISHOPS, Puebla Document (23 March 1979), 6.
[17] Instrumentum Laboris, 6. Pope Paul III, in his the Brief Veritas
Ipsa (2 June 1537), condemned racist theses and recognized that the
native peoples, whether Christian or not, possess the dignity of the human
person, enjoy the right to their possessions and may not be reduced to slavery.
The Pope declared: “as truly men … are by no means to be deprived of their
liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the
faith of Jesus Christ”. This magisterial teaching was reaffirmed by Popes
GREGORY XIV, Bull Cum Sicuti (28 April 1591); URBAN VIII,
Bull Commissum Nobis (22 April 1639); BENEDICT XIV, Bull Immensa
Pastorum Principis to the Bishops of Brazil (20 December 1741);
GREGORY XVI, Brief In Supremo (3 December 1839); LEO
XIII, Epistle to the Bishops of Brazil on Slavery (15 May
1888); and SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Message to the Indigenous People of
America, Santo Domingo (12 October 1992), 2: Insegnamenti 15/2
(1982), 346.
[18] FREDERICO BENÍCIO DE SOUSA COSTA, Pastoral Letter (1909).
Ed. Imprenta del gobierno del estado de Amazonas, Manaus, 1994, 83.
[19] Instrumentum Laboris, 7.
[20] Address at the Second World Meeting of Popular Movements,
Santa Cruz de la Sierra-Bolivia (9 July 2015).
[21] Address at the Meeting with Indigenous People of Amazonia, Puerto Maldonado-Peru
(19 January 2018): AAS 110 (2018), 300.
[22] Instrumentum Laboris, 24.
[23] YANA LUCILA LEMA, Tamyahuan Shamakupani (Con la
lluvia estoy viviendo), 1, at
http://siwarmayu.com/es/yana-lucila-lema-6-poemas-de-tamyawan-shamukupani-con-la-lluvia-estoy-viviendo.
[24] BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE OF ECUADOR, Cuidemos nuestro planeta (20
April 2012), 3.
[25] No. 142: AAS 107 (2015), 904-905.
[26] No. 82.
[27] Ibid., 83.
[28] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November
2013), 239: AAS 105 (2013), 1116.
[29] Ibid., 218: AAS 105 (2013), 1110.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Cf. Instrumentum Laboris, 57.
[32] Cf. EVARISTO EDUARDO DE MIRANDA, Quando o Amazonas corria para o
Pacifico, Petrópolis, 2007, 83-93.
[33] JUAN CARLOS GALEANO, “Paisajes”, in Amazonia y otros poemas,
ed. Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogotá, 2011, 31.
[34] JAVIER YGLESIAS, “Llamado”, in Revista peruana de literatura,
n. 6 (June 2007), 31.
[35] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 144:
AAS 107 (2015) 905.
[36] Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christus Vivit (25
March 2019), 186.
[37] Ibid., 200.
[38] Videomessage for the World Indigenous Youth Gathering,
Soloy-Panama (18 January 2019).
[39] MARIO VARGAS LLOSA, Prologue to El Hablador, Madrid (8 October
2007).
[40] Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christus Vivit (25
March 2019), 195.
[41] SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus (1
May 1991), 50: AAS 83 (1991), 856.
[42] FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN
BISHOPS, Aparecida Document (29 June 2007), 97.
[43] Address at the Meeting with Indigenous People of Amazonia,
Puerto Maldonado-Peru (19 January 2018): AAS 110 (2018), 301.
[44] Instrumentum Laboris, 123, e.
[45] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 144:
AAS 107 (2015), 906.
[46] Cf. BENEDICT XVI, Encyclical Letter Veritas in Caritate (29
June 2009), 51: AAS 101 (2009), 687: “Nature, especially in our time, is so
integrated into the dynamics of society and culture that by now it hardly
constitutes an independent variable. Desertification and the decline in
productivity in some agricultural areas are also the result of impoverishment
and underdevelopment among their inhabitants”.
[47] Message for the 2007 World Day of Peace, 8: Insegnamenti,
II/2 (2006), 776.
[48] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 16, 91,
117, 138, 240: AAS 107 (2015), 854, 884, 894, 903, 941.
[49] Document Bolivia: informe país. Consulta pre sinodal,
2019, p. 36; cf. Instrumentum Laboris, 23.
[50] Instrumentum Laboris, 26.
[51] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 146:
AAS 107 (2015), 906.
[52] Documento con aportes al Sínodo de la Diócesis de San José del
Guaviare y de la Arquidiócesis de Villavicencio y Granada (Colombia);
cf. Instrumentum Laboris, 17.
[53] EUCLIDES DA CUNHA, Los Sertones (Os Sertões), Buenos
Aires (1946), 65-66.
[54] PABLO NERUDA, “Amazonas” in Canto General (1938), I,
IV.
[55] REPAM, Document Eje de Fronteras. Preparación para el
Sínodo de la Amazonia, Tabatinga-Brasil (3 February 2019), p. 3; cf. Instrumentum
Laboris, 8.
[56] AMADEU THIAGO DE LELLO, Amazonas, patria da agua. Spanish
translation by Jorge Timossi, in
http://letras-uruguay.espaciolatino.com/aaa/mello_thiago/amazonas_patria_da_agua.htm.
[57] VINICIUS DE MORAES, Para vivir un gran amor, Buenos
Aires, 2013, 166.
[58] JUAN CARLOS GALEANO, “Los que creyeron”, in Amazonia y otros poemas,
ed. Universidad externado de Colombia, Bogotá, 2011, 44.
[59] HARALD SIOLI, A Amazônia, Petropolis (1985), 60.
[60] SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Address to an International Convention on
“The Environment and Health” (24 March 1997), 2.
[61] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 34: AAS 107
(2015), 860.
[62] Cf. ibid., 28-31: AAS 107 (2015), 858-859.
[63] Ibid., 38: AAS 107 (2015), 862.
[64] Cf. FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN
BISHOPS, Aparecida Document (29 June 2007), 86.
[65] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 38: AAS
107 (2015), 862.
[66] Cf. ibid, 144, 187: AAS 107 (2015), 905-906, 921.
[67] Cf. ibid., 183: AAS 107 (2015), 920.
[68] Ibid., 53: AAS 107 (2015), 868.
[69] Cf. ibid., 49: AAS 107 (2015), 866.
[70] Preparatory Document for the Synod on the Pan Amazon Region,
8.
[71] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 56: AAS 107
(2015), 869.
[72] Ibid., 59: AAS 107 (2015), 870.
[73] Ibid., 33: AAS 107 (2015), 860.
[74] Ibid, 220: AAS 107 (2015), 934.
[75] Ibid., 215: AAS 107 (2015), 932.
[76] SUI YUN, Cantos para el mendigo y el rey, Wiesbaden,
2000.
[77] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 100:
AAS 107 (2015), 887.
[78] Ibid., 204: AAS 107 (2015), 928.
[79] Cf. Documents of Santarem (1972) and Manaos (1997) in NATIONAL
CONFERENCE OF THE BISHOPS OF BRAZIL, Desafío missionário. Documentos da
Igreja na Amazônia, Brasilia, 2014, pp. 9-28 and 67-84.
[80] Cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24
November 2013), 220: AAS 105 (2013), 1110.
[81] Ibid., 164: AAS 105 (2013), 1088-1089.
[82] Ibid., 165: AAS 105 (2013), 1089.
[83] Ibid., 161: AAS 105 (2013), 1087.
[84] As the Second Vatican Council states in No. 44 of the
Constitution Gaudium et Spes: “The Church learned early in her
history to express the Christian message in the concepts and languages of
different peoples and tried to clarify it in the light of the wisdom of their
philosophers: it was an attempt to adapt the Gospel to the understanding of all
and the requirements of the learned, insofar as this could be done. Indeed,
this kind of adaptation and preaching of the revealed word must ever be the law
of all evangelization. In this way it is possible to create in every country
the possibility of expressing the message of Christ in suitable terms and to
foster vital contact and exchange between the Church and different cultures”.
[85] Letter to the Pilgrim People of God in Germany, 29 June 2019,
9: L’Osservatore Romano, 1-2 July 2019, p. 9.
[86] Cf. SAINT Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium primum, cap.
23: PL 50, 668: “Ut annis scilicet consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur
aetate”.
[87] Letter to the Pilgrim People of God in Germany, 29 June 2019, 9. Cf.
the words attributed to Gustav Mahler: “Tradition ist nicht die Anbetung der
Asche, sondern die Weitergabe des Feuers”: “Tradition is not the worship of
ashes but the passing on of the flame”.
[88] Address to University Professors and Cultural Leaders, Coimbra (15 May
1982): Insegnamenti 5/2 (1982), 1702-1703.
[89] Message to the Indigenous Peoples of the American Continent,
Santo Domingo (12 October 1992), 6: Insegnamenti 15/2 (1992),
346; cf. Address to Participants in the National Congress of the
Ecclesial Movement of Cultural Commitment (16 January 1982), 2: Insegnamenti 5/1
(1982), 131.
[90] SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita
Consecrata (15 March 1996), 98: AAS 88 (1996), 474-475.
[91] No. 115: AAS 105 (2013),1068.
[92] Ibid., 116: AAS 105 (2013),1068.
[93] Ibid.
[94] Ibid., 129: AAS 105 (2013), 1074.
[95] Ibid., 116: AAS 105 (2013), 1068.
[96] Ibid., 117: AAS 105 (2013), 1069.
[97] Ibid.
[98] SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Address to the Plenary Assembly of the
Pontifical Council for Culture (17 January 1987): Insegnamenti 10/1
(1987), 125.
[99] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November
2013), 129: AAS 105 (2013), 1074.
[100] FOURTH GENERAL MEETING OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN
EPISCOPATE, Santo Domingo Document (12-28 October 1992), 17.
[101] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November
2013), 198: AAS 105 (2013), 1103.
[102] Cf. VITTORIO MESSORI-JOSEPH RATZINGER, Rapporto sulla fede,
Cinisello Balsamo, 1985, 211-212.
[103] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November
2013), 198: AAS 105 (2013), 1103.
[104] PEDRO CASALDÁLIGA, “Carta de navegar (Por el Tocantins amazónico)”
in El tiempo y la espera, Santander, 1986.
[105] Saint Thomas Aquinas explains it in this way: “The threefold way that
God is in things: one is common, by essence, presence and power; another by
grace in his saints; a third in Christ, by union” (Ad Colossenses, II,
2).
[106] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 235:
AAS 107 (2015), 939.
[107] THIRD GENERAL MEETING OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN
EPISCOPATE, Puebla Document (23 March 1979), 196.
[108] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November
2013), 178: AAS 105 (2013), 1094.
[109] SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Dogmatic Constitution on the
Church Lumen Gentium, 11; cf. Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete
et Exsultate (19 March 2018), 10-11.
[110] APOSTOLIC VICARIATES OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON, “Segunda asamblea episcopal
regional de la selva”, San Ramón-Perú (5 October 1973), in Éxodo de la
Iglesia en la Amazonia. Documentos pastorales de la Iglesia en la Amazonia
peruana, Iquitos, 1976, 121.
[111] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November
2013), 123: AAS 105 (2013), 1071.
[112] Cf. Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (19 March
2018), 126-127.
[113] Ibid., 32.
[114] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 235:
AAS 107 (2015), 939.
[115] Ibid.
[116] Ibid., 236: AAS 107 (2015), 940.
[117] Ibid.
[118] Ibid., 235: AAS 107 (2015), 939.
[119] Cf. Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium,
37-40, 65, 77, 81.
[120] During the Synod, there was a proposal to develop an “Amazonian
rite”.
[121] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 237:
AAS 107 (2015), 940.
[122] Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (19 March
2016), 49: AAS 108 (2016), 331; cf. ibid. 305: AAS 108 (2016), 436-437.
[123] Cf. ibid., 296, 308: AAS 108 (2016), 430-431, 438.
[124] FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN BISHOPS'
CONFERENCES, Aparecida Document, 29 June 2007, 100 e.
[125] Cf. CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, Letter Sacerdotium
Ministeriale to Bishops of the Catholic Church on certain questions
concerning the minister of the Eucharist (6 August 1983): AAS 75 (1983),
1001-1009.
[126] Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem (15 August 1988), 27:
AAS 80 (1988), 1718.
[127] SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa Theologiae III, q. 8,
a.1, resp.
[128] Cf. SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Decree on the Ministry and
Life of Priests Presbyterorum Ordinis, 5; SAINT JOHN PAUL II,
Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia (17 April 2003), 26:
AAS 95 (2003), 448.
[129] It is also proper to the priest to administer the Anointing of the
Sick, because it is intimately linked to the forgiveness of sins: “And if he
has committed sins, he will be forgiven” (Jas 5:15).
[130] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1396; SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Encyclical
Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia (17 April 2003), 26: AAS 95
(2003), 451; cf. HENRI DE LUBAC, Meditation sur l’Église, Paris
(1968), 101.
[131] SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Decree on the Ministry and Life of
Priests Presbyterorum Ordinis, 6.
[132] It is noteworthy that, in some countries of the Amazon Basin, more
missionaries go to Europe or the United States than remain to assist their own
Vicariates in the Amazon region.
[133] At the Synod, mention was also made of the lack of seminaries for the
priestly formation of indigenous people.
[134] Cf. SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Dogmatic Constitution on the
Church Lumen Gentium, 3.
[135] SAINT PAUL VI, Homily on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi,
17 June 1965: Insegnamenti 3 (1965), 358.
[136] It is possible that, due to a lack of priests, a bishop can entrust
“participation in the exercise of the pastoral care of a parish… to a deacon,
to another person who is not a priest, or to a community of persons” (Code
of Canon Law, 517 §2).
[137] FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN BISHOPS’
CONFERENCES, Aparecida Document, 29 June 2007, 178.
[138] Ibid., 475.
[139] Instrumentum Laboris, 65.
[140] Ibid., 63.
[141] Ibid., 129, d, 2.
[142] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November
2013), 228: AAS 105 (2013), 1113.
[143] Ibid., 226: AAS 105 (2013), 1112.
[144] SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Declaration on the Relation of the
Church to Non-Christian Religions Nostra Aetate, 2.
[145] CELAM, III Simposio latinoamericano sobre Teología India,
Ciudad de Guatemala (23-27 October 2006).
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