The Brazilian Bishops' conference has insisted the upcoming Pan Amazonia synod is an internal church matter.
Following the Brazilian government’s expression of concern that topics to be discussed at the synod “affect national sovereignty”, the secretary general of the Brazilian bishops’ conference, Bishop Leonardo Steiner, posted a video on the conference website beginning with a clip of Pope Francis announcing the synod, which he said would be devoted to “new paths of evangelisation” and especially with the indigenous peoples “so often forgotten and without any prospect of a happy future” and with “the cause of the Amazon rainforest, a lung of supreme importance for our planet,” and aimed at “justice and peace”. The synod, entitled "The Amazon: New paths for the church and for integral ecology," will take place int the Vatican in October.
Bishop Steiner said that the synod is “a Church event for the Church”, but as such it would deal with “the whole issue of the Amazon region, the peoples, the environment; that whole situation will be discussed.” But, he said, the Holy Father wanted the synod to find new ways of evangelising.
Bishop Steiner’s remarks, with no mention of the Brazilian government, are nonetheless a firm restatement of the Brazilian Church’s understanding of evangelisation as including the defence of indigenous culture and land rights, which has often brought it into conflict with logging companies and ranchers and cost the lives of hundreds of Church personnel, including US-born Sister Dorothy Stang, murdered in 2005 by gunmen acting on the orders of a local rancher. This commitment received support in 2015 from Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical Laudato Si’.
This Church tradition has often been at odds with that of the Brazilian military, which has seen the Amazon region as empty space, easily infiltrated by foreigners or subversives, which has to be occupied by settlers and military garrisons. This tradition has been revived under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, himself a former army captain, who has appointed military officers to senior positions. The Brazilian media has reported that three ministers are travelling to the Amazon state of Pará on Wednesday 13 February to discuss projects including a bridge over the Amazon river, a hydro-electric scheme and the extension of a highway to the border with Surinam.
The head of the President’s security office, General Augusto Heleno, commented: “Care of the Brazilian part of the Amazon region is a matter for Brazil. We don’t need advice from foreign NGOs or foreign heads of state.”
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