September 1, 2019 — Last month, Fr. Michael Czerny, recently named cardinal, published in L’Osservatore Romano a text on the upcoming Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region, prophetic words given the intensity of the fires that are destroying this region today, threatening the living environments of many Indigenous peoples. “We cannot separate the social and the natural, we must not separate the environmental from the pastoral,” writes Fr. Czerny. Below the full text:
The Prophetic Commitment of the Church in the Amazon and Integral Human Development
Like the Good Samaritan, the Church wishes to act in the Amazon on the Gospel commitment to compassion and justice. It must observe, understand, then reach out and act. This is the reason why our Holy Father Francis convoked a Synod of Bishops for the pan-Amazon region. With the help of the Synod, it will be possible to introduce pastoral and environmental initiatives in the Amazon and there by affirm the modes of being the Church that such actions entail.
This readiness for commitment is usefully synthesized in the final chapter of the Instrumentum Laboris (IL) which sums up the challenges and hopes of a prophetic Church in the Amazon basin. The horizon within which it moves, without which there can be no justice and no life, is the fact that “everythingis connected” as Pope Francis explained in Laudato si’ (138). The social and the natural cannot, the environmental and the pastoral must not be separated. Dangerous compartmentalizations – intellectual and spiritual, economic and political – have put human life in jeopardy on Earth, the common home of humanity.
The upcoming Synod is committed to helping heal the breaches in a part of the world where the consequences of contemporary misconceptions and pernicious practices are particularly serious. It is time for the Church to grapple with this challenge. Hence the words of the Synod theme, “New paths for the Church and for integral ecology”, and the title of the final chapter of the Instrumentum Laboris, “The prophetic role of the Church and integral human promotion”. Both speak about dimensions or dynamics which must go together in the Church’s mission: pastoral ministries, human promotion, integral ecology, new paths and prophetic roles. Like Laudato si’ with its extensive historical, scientific, economic and pastoral exposition, the IL also provides a lengthy analysis of current conditions in the Amazon. In the words of Pope Francis:“Amazonia is being disputed on various fronts… There is neo-extractivism and the pressure being exerted by great business interests that want to lay hands on its petroleum, gas, wood, gold and forms of agro-industrial monocultivation”.[1] The IL adds: “The manifold destruction of human and environmental life, the diseases and pollution of rivers and lands, the felling and burning of trees, the massive loss of biodiversity, the disappearance of species (more than one million of the eight millionanimals and plants are at risk), constitute a brutal reality that challenges us all. Violence, chaos and corruption are rampant. The territory has become a space of discord and of extermination of peoples, cultures and generations” (23).
The conditions in the Amazon have various causes. There are local and multinational interests which support and encourage public or private investments at the cost of devastating impacts on the Amazon’s environment and its inhabitants. However, a key starting point is that indigenous peoples see their territories threatened, undermined by interests that exploit them, and they are often denied title to their own lands.
This is in contravention of international law and conventions. “The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (adopted on 13 September 2007), to which the pope has referred on several occasions, contains rights as important as the right to self-determination, by virtue of which indigenous peoples determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development (art. 3). In the exercise of their self-determination, indigenous peoples have the right to autonomy in matters relating to their internal and local affairs (art. 4). And article 6 of the1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries gives rise to their right not to be affected by legislative or administrative measures which may affect them directly without first being consulted ‘in good faith and in a manner appropriate to the circumstances’ in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent”.[2]
In fact, it is precisely the disparity of forces and, in many cases, the flagrant disrespect for constitutional rights, as well as the imposition of a so-called model of development, that are continually causing great social upheavals in many indigenous communities: vulnerability, deteriorated relationships, migration, unemployment, violence and hunger. The lack of recognition, demarcation and title in the territories (a sine qua non for personal security, community stability and cultural survival) has led to an alarming number of martyrs in the Amazon. “To question power in the defense of territory and human rights is to risk one’s life, to step onto the path of cross and martyrdom” (IL 145).
The IL gives the example of 1,119 indigenous people murdered between 2003 and 2017 and adds abroad explanation, “for defending their territory”.[3] In fact, these murders are sometimes attributed to circumstances of drunkenness, domestic violence or local disputes. In general, though, they should be understood as consequences of environmental as well as social and structural causes, problems flowing from the lack of demarcation of the territories and their invasion by powerful outside interests.
The Church in its pastoral role works closely with victims, and in its prophetic role opposes abuses. It is called to be “the advocate of justice and defender of the poor”, as Pope Benedict XVI reminded the Aparecida Conference in his opening address (Aparecida 395). The Church’s presence is, in reality, “a prism through which one can identify the fragile points of the response of our States and societies as such to urgent situations and over which, independently of the Church, there are concrete and historical debts that we cannot avoid”.[4] “Seeing with a critical conscience” as the Church does wherever it ministers, it also observes “a series of behaviours and realities of the indigenous peoples that go against the Gospel” (IL 144).
The Supreme Pontiffs beginning with Pope Leo XIII in the 1890s, Vatican II and Catholic Social Teaching all provide clear guidance on how the Church should react. In response to a dominant model of society that produces exclusion and inequality and an economic model which kills the most vulnerable and destroys our common home, the mission of the Church includes a prophetic commitment to the dignity of every human being without distinction, and to justice, peace, and the integrity of creation.
As Pope Francis states so clearly, “I believe that the central issue is how to reconcile the right to development, both social and cultural, with the protection of the particular characteristics of indigenous peoples and their territories. […] In this regard, the right to prior and informed consent should always prevail”.[5] At Puerto Maldonado he said, “I consider it essential to begin creating institutional expressions of respect, recognition and dialogue with the native peoples, acknowledging and recovering their native cultures, languages, traditions, rights and spirituality”.[6]
In the Amazon, the good living (buen vivir) of the indigenous people depends on the just demarcation of their territories and on scrupulous respect for the same. Politics, in the words of St John Paul II, “is the use of legitimate authority in order to attain the common good of society”.[7] The basic political task is to assure a just social order, and the Church “cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the struggle for justice” (EG 183, cf. Deus caritas est, 28). So the Church is at the indigenous people’s side in the care of their territory.
With all these great difficulties and dynamics, threats and promises in our minds and also in our prayer, let us recall the words of Pope Francis which serve to open this final chapter ofthe IL. “From the heart of the Gospel we see the profound connection between evangelization and human advancement, which must necessarily find expression and develop in every work of evangelization” (EG 178).
Michael Czerny S.J.
Under Secretary, Migrants and Refugees Section
Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development
Special Secretary, Synod for the Pan-Amazon
[1] Pope Francis, Meeting with Indigenous People of the Amazon, Coliseo Regional Madre de Dios (Puerto Maldonado, Perú), 19 January 2018.
[2] Pedro Barreto S.J., “Sínodo de la Amazonía y derechos humanos: Pueblos, comunidades y Estados en diálogo,” Civiltà Cattolica 2019
[3] Cf. Consiglio Indigenista Missionario, CNBB, Brazil, “Relatório de violência contra os Povos Indígenas no Brasil – Dados de 2017”, pp. 84ff. This report is presented by Dom Roque Paloschi – 4 -“Na ausência da Justiça, a violência cotidiana devasta as vidas dentro e fora das terras indígenas”, Brasília 2018, p. 9.
[4] Pedro Barreto S.J., art. cit.
[5] Pope Francis, Address to III Global Meeting of the Indigenous Peoples’ Forum of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), 15 February 2017.[
[6] Pope Francis, Meeting with Indigenous People of the Amazon, Coliseo Regional Madre de Dios (Puerto Maldonado, Perú), 19 January 2018.
[7] John Paul II, Address for the Jubilee of Government Leaders, Members of Parliament and Politicians, 4 November 2000, § 2.
