Brazilian bishop sees a land of promise in the Amazon

Bishop Dom Mário Antonio da Silva knows the Amazon is in trouble, but he doesn’t want its crises — political, ecological and cultural — to define the synod he will attend in Rome Oct. 6-27.

“It’s not just the challenges but the potentialities (of the Amazon),” da Silva said.

For two years, Pope Francis has been very clear that the synod will be about universal challenges for the whole Church — “new roads of evangelization” and “integral ecology.”

As bishop of Roraima and vice president of Brazil’s national conference of Catholic bishops, da Silva sees the Amazon’s potential represented in what the Church is already becoming. He sees it in how Indigenous people are increasingly included and empowered, in how the Church stands with poor and landless people and in how the Church has awakened to the threat of climate change.

“The threat is to our common house, Pope Francis makes that clear,” he said. “Obviously, the threat is more accentuated for the Amazon.”

Da Silva traces the history of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazonian Region back to two separate 2015 events. The first was Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’, released just before nations came together in Paris to negotiate common goals to limit climate change. The second was a specific request for a synod on the Amazon from Brazil’s bishops.

The synod shouldn’t be a wish list but rather a practical attempt to deal with reality, he said.

“We could ask, should there be huge cities in the Amazon? But they already exist,” he said.

Rather than a political event or a seminar on ecology, da Silva hopes the synod will initiate a process for Catholics to examine relationships.

“This (new) evangelization isn’t new content, but in a way new relationships with each other, with Christ,” he said.

This emphasis on relationships and evangelization isn’t a departure from the Laudato Si’ focus on the environment.

“Concern with ecology helps us with concern for our common house, beginning with human life,” da Silva said.

He won’t say what he hopes comes out of the synod. He insists that a synod is nothing like a legislature where politicians debate and negotiate proposals, policies and solutions.

“The synod, by its nature, is an ecclessial process, not an event,” he said. “It’s a process of listening to the people who live in the Amazon — to their challenges and also to their know-how.”

Pope Francis takes a similar view. In an interview last month he said the synod “is the child of Laudato Si’.” The planet’s serious environmental issues means “ours will be an urgent synod,” he said.

“But beware: a synod is not a meeting of scientists or politicians. It is not a parliament; it is something else,” he said. It will have “an evangelizing mission and dimension.”