The Amazon and the Synod on the Amazon

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good ... And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.

Our ancient scriptures are sacred, earthy and beautiful: “In the beginning ... God saw that it was good.” Our ancestors had an innate sense that this gift called ‘earth’ is our ‘Common Home,’ an image that Pope Francis uses frequently. How is it possible that some people learn to love and care for our world and its inhabitants, while others see it only through the lens of greed?

As was true with ancient Israel, the early indigenous tribes of South America reached out to the people who came from across the waters. Together they shared their lives and food, their thatched-roof huts and berries, their songs, and hopes. The sharing of Christian hymns and indigenous prayers was a way of building communion and trust, the preamble to evangelization.

I suspect that all of us have seen the beautiful and powerful movie, The Mission, the story of the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries who journeyed into the jungles of what today is called Brazil in search of the rest of God’s creation, or perhaps in search of the face of God. Those early missionaries set off with dreams and hopes, with faith and the willingness to take new risks.

Not only did they stumble upon beautiful lands and rivers; they encountered other human beings, children of the same living and loving God. Little by little they came face-to-face with each other, sharing gifts and greetings, fruits and seeds, stories, songs, and dance. The Church of the Americas, in communion with Pope Francis, has been pondering these images, recalling the great “encounter” that happened when East and West met in dug-out canoes in the Amazon. I have had the wonderful opportunity to have lived for several months among the “peoples of the Amazon” at two different times, the second being last year, just as the Synod on the Amazon was beginning its work, focused on evangelization within the encounter of diverse cultures.  Little by little, and thanks to REPAM (The Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network), I began to glimpse more and more of Pope Francis’ vision of a multi-cultured Church, a Church in which everyone is involved in the new evangelization. I think that the Holy Father has discerned correctly; he is calling us to be a bridge between North and South, between rich and poor, between the Christian faith and the rest of the world.

At the beginning of the work on the Synod, REPAM coordinated more than three hundred listening sessions throughout the Amazonian region, involving about 22,000 people directly involved in territorial assemblies. Another arm of REPAM helped to organize smaller dialogue groups, through which another 65,000 people participated through their parishes.

Peruvian Cardinal, Pedro Barreto, S.J., who steered this project of a renewed evangelization from the moment that Pope Francis called on him to take the helm, reminds us that, “The Synod, has deep waters. The blueprint is Pope Francis’ encyclical, ‘Laudato Si,’ which invites all of us to take action, because the Earth, and the poor are crying as the earth is dying.”

Pope Francis has sounded the alarm, calling on those in power to stop the illegal mining that pollutes the pristine rivers of the Amazon region. The same goes for the greed that is destroying South America’s virgin forests. Every day in the small town of Puerto Maldonado, where I lived for half of last year, I would take a walk in the afternoon. And like clockwork I would watch as 20-30 huge logging trucks, filled with 40-60 enormous trees, barreling down the road, on the two-lane highway that leads towards the border of Brazil. Finally, one day I asked somebody:  “Where does all of the lumber go that is cut and hauled away in these huge trucks every day?” The person looked at me as if I were stupid, and said, “To China, where else do you think it would go?” The illegal cutting and burning of forests in the Amazon has already destroyed more than 20% of the lung of the planet.” The Holy Father is trying his best to prevent any further damage.

Pope Francis described ‘Laudato Sí’ as “the deep strength of the Synod ... the deep waters of God and what God is asking of us for the evangelization of the Amazon region.”  It is time to stop building weapons, to lay down our arms, and build a world of bridges and schools instead of petroleum rigs and gold mines. We are being called to preserve our forests and care for our polluted rivers. This will happen only if we who call ourselves Christians are willing to choose the path of justice, mercy, and peace. We must let the Truth show us the way, the Truth that St. Dominic used as his compass. The past centuries have left way too many trails of tears and wounds. It is time to heal those wounds and to remember that we are sisters and brothers, children of the same God – seeking ways together to build a world of justice and peace.

At the final Mass of the Synod Pope Francis sadly recognized that some of the enemies of the Synod did all they could to make the Synod fail. As he said:  “They despise their traditions, erase their history, occupy their lands, and usurp their goods. How much alleged superiority, transformed into oppression and exploitation, exists even today!” he said sadly.  “The mistakes of the past were not enough to stop the plundering of other persons and the inflicting of wounds on our brothers and sisters: we have seen it in the scarred face of the Amazon region,” he said. [1]

Says Pope Francis, “Those who criticize (our outreach to the poor) are on the shore. They are not in the boat. The boat is the Church, headed for an ocean of love, justice, and the peace of Christ. Those who stubbornly remain on the shore,” he says, “want a ‘static Church’ where nothing changes.”

In his closing address at the end of the synod, Pope Francis noted that the Amazon synod had offered a pastoral, spiritual, cultural, and ecological diagnosis of the region. The final document takes conversion as its theme, says Pope Francis. The document describes the Amazon as ‘a wounded and deformed beauty’ at risk, due to increased mining and deforestation, which is increasing the threat of global warming. The future of the Amazon is linked to the future of our world. The ecological crisis is so deep that Cardinal Czerny went so far as to say, “If we don't change, we won't make it.” Pope Francis has urged the media to keep their eyes on the big picture, warning against ‘elites’ in the Church who obsess over one small part of the Synod message. “Because they don't have the courage to be with the world, they think they are with God,” he says. [2]