Temperatures are soaring here, and the humidity is suffocating. It feels like a metaphor for the heat of the battle going on at the heart of the Church. The opposition to October’s Synod on the Amazon is already ­hardening, with a website, ­panamazonsynodwatch.com, belonging to the network of societies associated with the extreme conservative Tradition, Family and Property network leading the charge. It claims the synod, which seeks to put forward a Church with an Amazonian face, plans to “impose a radical eco-tribalist model on the Holy Catholic Church and civic society”.

Meanwhile, United States Cardinal Raymond Burke, a forthright critic of Francis, has raised the alarm over the synod’s plan to discuss the ordination of older married men, while Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Pope’s liturgy prefect, reiterated last month that in his view there should be no relaxation of mandatory clerical celibacy.
    
We can expect more hostile reaction when the Pope publishes the new apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia, which is set to downgrade the status of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and to refocus the central administration of the Church around evangelisation.