The bishops in charge of the attention to the communities of the Amazon concluded in Bogotá a regional meeting in which they assumed the commitment to strengthen their pastoral work with three great priorities: announce the gospel, defend with justice the Amazon peoples and take care of the jungle as “common house”, as Pope Leo XIV asked for it in a recent message.
“As a Panamazon Church, we thank Pope Leo XIV for the message he sent us and we commit ourselves to continue responding in our pastoral work to the dimensions that indicates: ‘The mission of the Church to announce the gospel to all men, the right treatment of the people that inhabit there and the care of the common house,” they affirm in their final message, dated August 20.
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The meeting of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA) was held from August 17 to 20 at the headquarters of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (CELAM) in Bogotá. The event was attended by the prefect of Dicastery for Integral Human Development, Cardinal Michael Czerny, and 90 bishops of 75 ecclesiastical jurisdictions.
Representatives of CELAM, the Latin American Confederation of Religious (Clar), of Cáritas de Latinina and the Caribbean, of the Panamaneous Ecclesial Network (REPAM) and of several Episcopal Conferences were also attended.
The Pontiff directed his message to the president of the CEAMA, Cardinal Pedro Barreto, to thank the prelates for “promoting the greatest good of the Church in favor of the faithful of the beloved Amazon territory.”
In its text, CEAMA also refers to the care of the Amazon and the church members who give themselves daily by protecting communities and the bioma in which they live. “The life delivered martyrially from numerous sisters and brothers in faith is a living testimony that continually encourages us in our evangelizing mission,” they said.
“The Amazon is not an empty land to exploit,” they said, but an inhabited place where the presence of God is manifested, but also faces the consequences of climate change.
“(This) commits us to be shepherds who listen and share with sensitivity the cultures and spiritualities of the peoples that inhabit it. We memory that we are land and that it cries out for the damage we cause,” they added.
On evangelization, the prelates recognized that this challenges them “to generate some synodal priorities that are applicable according to the reality that each ecclesiastical jurisdiction lives in the Amazon. As bishops we feel called to grow in the prophetic spirit that must always characterize the Church.”
“The Spirit of God drives us to assume, to already be living a church focused on baptism, from which all the vocations and ordered ministries have emerged, instituted and those that the Spirit continues to raise,” they added.
The message also expressed the desire of the CEAMA of “developing training programs for seminarians and the clergy, religious life and pastoral agents” and of achieving “forms of economic sustainability” for their pastoral work.
Eduardo Berdejo
Professional in Social Communication of the National University of San Marcos in Peru, I have more than 20 years of experience in Catholic digital journalism. As part of ACI Press, I have been sent to cover the trips of Pope Francis to Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Peru, in addition to the Synod of Sinodality in the Vatican in 2023.