News - Amazon Synod RSS Feed

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Synod members called for the Catholic Church to deepen its theology in a way that would help people recognize “ecological sins.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Most bishops who lead dioceses in the Amazon support the ordination of married men of proven virtue, or “viri probati,” as a way of addressing the lack of priests in the region, a Brazilian bishop said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Lay men and women involved in ministry have been fundamental in spreading the Gospel and furthering the Catholic Church’s mission in the Amazon, a Brazilian bishop said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — While the Catholic Church has made strides to include the voice of women, especially in the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, women should be included among synod voting members and in church leadership positions, a German theologian said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Too many Christians today are “as long as” Christians, obeying God “as long as” God and the church meet their conditions and criteria for what is acceptable, just and righteous, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Synod participants offered several proposals to address the lack of priests in the Amazon region, including revising the formation program for candidates to the priesthood and instituting new ministries for lay men and women.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Synod of Bishops for the Amazon is a time of reflection, dialogue and listening to the needs and sufferings of indigenous people, Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — With its mandate to seek “new pathways for the church and for an integral ecology,” the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon follows Pope Francis’ call for the church to move forward without fear, Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes told participants.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — While the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon is focused on one small, but important geographical area, the issues involved impact the universal Catholic Church, said Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — People in Western countries need to see the different cultural expressions of faith that exist in other parts of the world, said some participants at the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon.

LIMA, Peru (CNS) — When Pope Francis came face to face with more than 2,000 Amazonian indigenous people in Peru in January 2018, he told them the place where they live is holy ground, and that they and the Amazon region are important to the Catholic Church and the entire world.

MANAUS, Brazil (CNS) — Three decades ago, when Pedro Mura was 12, ranchers seeking to seize his community’s land threatened his family with death. The family, Mura Indians from a remote village near the border between Brazil and Colombia, fled downriver in canoes, a monthlong ordeal that led them to a riverbank here.

ANAPU, Brazil (CNS) — Across a stream and down a dirt road at the edge of this Amazonian town, a carefully tended crypt marks the burial place of Notre Dame de Namur Sister Dorothy Stang.

ANAPU, Brazil (CNS) — The ads were irresistible: The Brazilian government was selling large tracts of property along a new highway in the heartland of Brazil, offering bargain prices to small-scale farmers willing to work the land.

ISLANDIA, Peru (CNS) — The parish where Sister Maria Emilia Molenda Kuche works stretches along the banks of the Amazon River and far up the Yavari River, an area sparsely populated by Tikuna, Yagua and Kukama Indians.

BOA VISTA, Brazil (CNS) — Consolata Brother Carlo Zacquini was ministering among the Yanomami people in a remote area of Brazil, near the border with Venezuela, when gold miners invaded their lands.

LETHEM, Guyana (CNS) — Edwina Tancredo last saw her 17-year-old son more than a year ago, when he and some friends left the village of Hiowa to seek work in a mine. A few months later, most of the group returned, but not her son.

HIOWA, Guyana (CNS) — Joseph Abraham, the son of two of the first teachers to work in Guyana’s remote Amerindian villages, never went to secondary school. Yet he became a teacher and principal of the school in Hiowa.

ST. IGNATIUS, Guyana (CNS) — In an open-sided circular building beside the Catholic chapel in this Amerindian village, Scarboro Father Ron MacDonell was explaining how the tongue, the teeth and the vocal cords work together to produce sounds.