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But now there is something new, something that is tilting the balance in favor of the peripheral, the local, and the particular.

You could see it happening in the gentle battle over liturgical space in the run-up to the synod's opening.

On October 4 in the Vatican Gardens and on the following night at a church not far from St Peter's, dozens of indigenous leaders and church workers led offerings and prayers, using objects and forms of worship from the region: a canoe, a mandorla, the image of a pregnant woman, as well as placards of Amazon martrys such as Sr. Dorothy Stang.

It was joyful, generous, and unmistakably Amazonian: the faithful People of God speaking and praying and dancing in their own way.

Yet at the big papal Mass in St Peter's the next morning, Amazonia was all but banished.

If the pope in his zinger homily hadn't invoked the Holy Spirit to "renew the paths of the Church in Amazonia, so that the fire of mission will continue to burn," you would have had no idea the synod was even taking place.

Indigenous leaders sat at the front and brought up the gifts but were silent: there were no intercessions for the region, no readings in an Amerindian language, and almost everything was Italian and solemn.

The center was back in charge.

But not for long.

The next morning the Amazonian people were in St. Peter's Basilica with Pope Francis, along with the canoe and the martyrs and Our Lady of the Amazon.

In a remarkable move, unprecedented at previous synods, the pope processed from the Basilica with the indigenous peoples, in their midst—el pastor con su pueblo—as they joyfully chanted, "The sons and daughters of the Forest, we praise you, Lord."

As they left St. Peter's and crossed the square to the synod hall, I thought of Jeremy Irons in Roland Joffé's film The Mission, the Jesuit who walks with his people into a hail of colonialist bullets.

There had been no shortage of rhetorical bullets in the run-up to the synod:

• superannuated cardinals telling Amazonian Catholics they were heretics for proposing to ordain married men;
• a panel of traditionalists (Cardinal Burke in the front row) claiming the synod would not "civilize the savages" but would instead "make the civilized savages"; and
• an EWTN-owned news outlet reporting that the ceremony in the Vatican Gardens—in which native peoples honored God's creation—was an essentially pagan, pantheistic affair.

In his speech opening the synod, the pope spoke of his pain at overhearing someone at the previous day's Mass mock the feather headdress of the leader who brought the gifts to the altar.

"Tell me," the pope asked the 300-odd participants, "what difference is there between wearing feathers on your head and the three-cornered hat used by some officials in our curial departments?"

In that opening address Francis was clear about where he and the synod would stand.

They would look at the Amazon region with the eyes of disciples and missionaries, respectful of the ancestral wisdom and culture of its peoples, and rejecting any approach that was colonialist, ideological, or exploitative.

They would not try to "discipline" the locals.

For whenever the church has had this mindset, Francis warned, it has failed utterly to evangelize.

The Jesuit pope reminded the synod's participants of the ill-fated sixteenth-century missions of the Jesuits Roberto Di Nobili, SJ, and Matteo Ricci, SJ, whose bold attempts at inculturation, in India and China respectively, were quashed by the pettiness and colonialist mindsets of church leaders at the time.

Without being planted in the local culture, the Gospel cannot take root: "homogenizing centralism," said Francis, is the enemy of "the authenticity of the culture of the peoples."

This synod would go the other way.

"We come to contemplate, to understand, to serve the peoples."

What matters, then, is the people of Amazonia, and especially the 3 million or so indigenous gathered in 390 peoples who, for the first time, are the central concern of a synod.

It is their welfare, their pastoral needs, that are at the heart of this gathering, as well as the natural world to which they are deeply, symbiotically connected.

Both are threatened with destruction as never before.

This life-or-death urgency demands, in turn, that the church examine the nature of its presence, how it can be embedded and inculturated, how it can it stand with, and promote the life of, its peoples in an area where one "regional vicariate" might be the size of half of Italy yet have just a handful of priests.

The issue is one of agency.

The synod is a test of the church's ability to implement the vision of Laudato si' in a region that almost daily dramatizes that encyclical's call to conversion.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ—a key drafter of Laudato si' who will also be drawing up the final document on which the synod will vote on October 26—told Commonweal that because "the Amazon region exemplifies the inextricable connection between the social and natural environments, the fate of people there and of their natural surroundings" there could be "no more concrete manner than this [synod] to lift Laudato si' off the page and put it into action."

This is the first ever "territorial" synod. Continue reading

The Synod is expected to generate carbon emissions of 572,809kg. The forestry licenses for the reforestation of ​​50 hectares in the Amazon basin will offset the emissions.

Baldisseri says air travel accounts for about 438,373kg of the carbon emissions, with 134,435kg being generated through other activities.

These measurements have been based on the anticipated consumption of energy, water and travel by participants. They include the production of waste and promotional materials.

Bishops from the nine South American countries that share the Amazon are taking part in the Synod.

They aim to highlight the serious threat of destruction hanging over the world's largest rainforest.

One of two Irish participants, Columban missionary Fr Peter Hughes, says he hopes the synod will set out a new view of ecology.

This would be based on Christian faith in God as the creator of a "common home", he says.

Hughes says the Church should firmly place itself alongside the region's indigenous people. This includes defending their territorial rights and way of life.

"The life of the [Amazon] people is intrinsically, inherently part of the territory. If the territory is injured, the people are injured," he says.

In August, as fires blazed across the Amazon, Pope Francis described the forest as vital for the Earth.

He appealed for prayers that the fires would be brought under control.

At that time, Francis told pilgrims in St Peter's Square that the Amazon's green "lung of forest is vital for our planet".

Deforestation would have grave repercussions on the world's environmental health, he said.

Source

• Catholic Ireland
• Image: DW

According to some experts, Brazilian Evangelicals could become a majority in the country as soon as 2032.

This phenomenon is particularly strong in the Amazon, where some states have the biggest percentage of Evangelicals in the country.

Four of the six Brazilian States with the biggest proportion of Evangelicals are located in the Amazon, in the northern part of the country.

In Rondônia, which is at the top of the list, there were 734,000 Catholics in 2010 - when the last data were released by the government - and 528,000 Evangelicals.

Ten years before, in 2000, the number of Catholics was 793,000 and there were only 375,000 Evangelicals.

That is one of the many issues the Amazonian bishops will have to discuss at the upcoming Synod for the Amazon region taking place Oct. 6-27 in Rome.

"Until the 1970s, when I arrived in the Amazon, Brazil was almost completely Catholic. But the expansion of the farmlands in the cleared rainforest changed everything," said Italian-born Bishop Flavio Giovenale of Cruzeiro do Sul, in the Amazonian State of Acre.

"It's almost like the Evangelicals had the project of transforming the Amazon into a non-Catholic territory, following the gigantic changes in the region," he said.

Most people avoid selecting one single reason for the increasing presence of Pentecostal and Neo-pentecostal Christians in the Amazon.

"It's a complex phenomenon. But the Evangelicals certainly filled up the spaces we had left open," saod Giovenale.

In major urban areas of the rainforest, such as Belém and Manaus - cities with populations of 1.5 million and 2.1 million, respectively - the process followed the same model as the rest of the country. In the opinion of Giovenale, rural migrants without roots in the city could find a community and a sense of Christianity only with the available pastors.

"The historical districts of most cities in Brazil are full of Catholic churches, while the poor, distant neighborhoods count only Evangelical churches," the bishop said.

In the cities, the so-called Prosperity Gospel theology quickly seduced many poor migrants who had to adapt to their new reality, according to the Italian-born priest Luigi Ceppi, who has lived in the Amazon since the 1980s.

"The poor were put aside. Then appeared a kind of religiousness which promised to satisfy their material needs," Ceppi argued. Continue reading

• Image: Vatican News

"Just as Jesus, who appeared walking on water, calmed the storm and strengthened the faith of the disciples, this boat will bring spiritual comfort and calm to the worries of needy men and women, abandoned to their fate," Pope Francis said in a letter sent to mark the ship's launch Aug. 17 in Belem, Brazil.

"In addition to being a beautiful concrete gesture in view of the Synod of Bishops for Amazon, this river hospital is above all a response to the Lord's mandate, who continues to send His disciples to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick," the pope said, according to Vatican News.

The hospital boat is the initiative of the Fraternity of Saint Francis of Assisi in the Providence of God in partnership with their local diocese and the Brazilian government. Read more

Three Catholic charities are among the 24 not-for-profit enterprises that will benefit from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos's newly launched philanthropic fund.

Catholic charities in one archdiocese to benefit from the funds say this will help them assist homeless people in three counties. The Community Services organisation in another archdiocese says during the next five years the funds will enable it to help 3,600 families facing homelessness.

Like the Catholic charities, all the organisations Bezos aims to help operate emergency and short-term shelters and help families move into permanent housing. Each will receive $2.5 million or $5 million from the Day 1 Families Fund.

"We hope these grants provide the additional resources these leaders and their organizations need to expand the scope and impact of their efforts," Bezos says.

When Bezos and his wife Mackenzie launched the fund in September this year, he said it would launch with a $2 billion commitment.

This would be split between the Day 1 Families Fund — helping homeless families — and the Day 1 Academies Fund — creating a "network of new, non-profit, tier-one preschools in low-income communities."

Bezos is reported as saying he wants to "shine a light and support the organisations that are doing compassionate, needle-moving work to provide shelter for young families in communities across (America)."

Source

• La Croix
• Forbes
• Image: YahooNews

Speaking to a two-day summit of Catholic and labour movement leaders at the Vatican last Friday, O'Grady said the world needs a new figure like Cardinal Manning.

(Manning was influential in setting the modern-day Catholic Church direction, advocated for social justice and helped settle the London dock strike of 1889.)

"He [Manning] didn't just make moral pronouncements but rolled up his sleeves and tried to bring about a fair settlement to the dockers' dispute," O'Grady continued.

She called on Catholics to challenge the titans of technology.

She named some of them as including tech giants Apple, Facebook and Google.

O'Grady went on to say these three tech giants negatively impact workers by not paying their fair share of taxes.

They are joined by Uber and Amazon, who exploit workers, O'Grady claimed.

She says they are "washing their hands" of the employer-employee relationship.

"When I speak to those young workers of Sports Direct, McDonalds or Amazon, they feel pretty alone in the world.

"They are facing employers that are far, far more powerful than the dockers' ones and need somebody to stand by their side and speak up for their rights.

"I would hope the Church can play a role."

The Vatican meeting O'Grady was addressing was organised by Cardinal Peter Turkston, who leads the Vatican's newly formed social action department.

The meeting's aim was to hear testimony of injustices suffered by working people and to consider how trade unions and the church can work together to achieve greater social justice.

In an advance press release, O'Grady said she would speak of young people she has met.

"This year I met the ‘McStrikers' - young fast-food workers at McDonald's, stuck on low pay and zero-hours contracts.

"Their demands are the same as the dockers nearly 130 years ago. They want a fair wage, guaranteed hours and recognition of their trade union...".

The press release continues:

"The church and the unions "share values of community, dignity and social solidarity … Together we can improve working lives and put dignity for working people ahead of market forces and freedom of capital.

"We can build a popular alliance for economic justice, in Britain and around the world."

Pope Francis has spoken against social injustice throughout his papacy.

In 2015 he denounced "the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature."

At that time, he called the unfettered pursuit of money "the dung of the devil".

Source

• The Tablet
• Catholic Herald
• The Irish Post
• The Guardian
• Image: Tarek Shelaby

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