The Synod for the Amazon began today in Rome, Sunday, October 6, and will continue till October 26th. The synod can be traced to a proposal of Pope Francis in October, 2017, to convoke a synod of bishops to look for “new pathways for the church and for an integral ecology.” 

The Amazon synod seeks to promote pastoral activity in the Amazon region, 2.1 million square miles of land, mostly rainforest, home of 30 million people;  many are indigenous peoples who live off the land.

The Amazon, Pope Francis noted today in his homily, has a crucial role in the world’s climate, but is being despoiled by fires set for immediate commercial gain. 

The synod addresses issues of injustice and pastoral challenge in the Amazon region, but they are also issues affecting the whole church and the entire planet as well.

“States view the Amazonia as a storage room filled with natural resources, with little regard for the lives of indigenous peoples or for the destruction of nature. The harmonious relationship between God the Creator, human beings and nature is broken by the harmful effects of neo-extractivism; by the pressure being exerted by strong business interests that want to lay hands on its petroleum, gas, wood, and gold; by construction related to infrastructure projects (for example, hydroelectric megaprojects and road construction, such as thoroughfares between the oceans); and by forms of agro-industrial mono-cultivation”. (Preparatory Document)

The synod sees human life, not isolated from the rest of creation, but coming from creation and in need of creation to flourish.

The Church testifies that Jesus “offers life to the full (cf Jn 10:10), a life full of God, a salvific life (zōē), which begins with creation and manifests itself from the start in the most elementary dimension of life (bios).In the Amazon, it is reflected in its abundant bio-diversity and cultures. That is to say, a full and integral life, a life that sings, a song to life, like the songs of rivers. It is a life that dances and that represents divinity and our relationship with it. 

‘Our pastoral service,’ as the Bishops affirmed in Aparecida, is a service ‘to the full life of indigenous peoples [that] requires proclaiming Jesus Christ and the Good News of the Kingdom of God, denouncing sinful situations, structures of death, violence and internal and external injustices, and fostering intercultural, interreligious and ecumenical dialogue’. Such announcing and denouncing we discern in the light of Jesus Christ the Living One (Rev 1:18), ‘the fullness of all revelation’ (Dei Verbum, no. 2).” (Instrumentum Laboris, no. 11).

Pope Francis planted a tree in the Vatican Garden on the Feast of St. Francis, October 4, as the Amazon synod began. Tomorrow, the Feast of the Holy Rosary, we hope to plant a tree in our Mary Garden after the 11 AM Mass,

Prayer

“Lord of the incarnation, Word made flesh, who became one of us, was born like us and lived in time and place like us, guide us in our time and place to new ways to care for creation.

Help us plant new life instead of cutting down and despoiling the world you have made. Help us live as one with the earth below us, the earth on which we stand, and the heavens above, so that “at the name of Jesus, every knee will bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess to the glory of God the Father, Jesus Christ is Lord.”

We pray for the Amazon region. May we learn from it to live in harmony with our own land and the earth which is our common home.  Amen.