The synod on the Amazon region in Latin America, which has now finished in Rome, has revealed how powerful the radical theology of Pope Francis can be. It integrates care for the poor with care for the planet; it upends the Church as a hierarchical pyramid so the first come last and the last, first; it finds the hand of God in everything that is good regardless of its label; and it smokes out the enemies of progress and development as being far outside the Catholic mainstream that they claim to defend. Henceforth the Church can speak of the “Amazon method” as a model for future reform, and as a template to discern how far each local Church has deviated from the “ways of the Lord”, as well as what it needs to do to straighten them.

The indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin, spread over nine nations with numerous tribes, languages and cultures, have in common an intimacy with nature expressed in the phrase “Mother Earth” – the notion that the entire natural environment, God’s glorious Creation, is a living thing, a home for humanity. That same humanity has nearly wrecked this common home, however, and it must urgently be rescued if it is to survive.