Pope Francis: Speech at the opening of the Synod for the Amazon

Original article by Vatican Synod on the Amazon

The Synod for the Amazon can say that it has four dimensions: the pastoral dimension, the cultural dimension, the social dimension and the ecological dimension. The first, the pastoral dimension is the essential one, which encompasses everything. We approach with a Christian heart and see the reality of Amazonia with the eyes of a disciple to understand and interpret it with the eyes of a disciple, because there are no neutral hermeneutics, hermeneutics, they are always conditioned by a previous option, our previous option is that of disciples. And I also know about missionaries, because the love that the Holy Spirit put in us drives us to the announcement of Jesus Christ, an announcement we all know that it is not to be confused with proselytism, but we approach to consider the reality of Amazonia, With this pastoral heart with the eyes of disciples and missionaries because the announcement of the Lord is not in a hurry and we also approach the Amazonian peoples on their toes, respecting their history, their cultures, their style of good living, in the etymological sense of the word , not in the social sense that we give them so many times, because the people have their own entity, all the people have their own wisdom, self-awareness, the people have a feeling, a way of seeing reality, a history, a hermeneutic and they tend to be protagonists of their own history with these things, with these qualities. And we approach alien to ideological colonizations that destroy or reduce the ideosincrace of peoples, today this is so common ideological colonization.

When the Church forgot about this, how it has to approach a peublo did not inculturize itself, it even underestimated certain peoples, and how many failures of which we regret today, think of De Nobile in India, Ricci in China and so many others. The homogenizing and homogenizing centralism did not let the authenticity of the culture of the peoples emerge. Ideologies are a dangerous weapon, we always tend to grab an ideology to interpret a people. Ideologies are reductive, and lead us to exaggeration in our attempt to understand intellectually, but without accepting, understanding without admiring, understanding without assuming, and then reality is received in categories, the most common are the categories of “isms”, so when we have to get closer to the reality of some original people we talk about indigenisms, and when we want to give him a clue to his better life, we don’t ask him, we talk about developmentalism, these “isms” reformulate life from the enlightened and enlightened laboratory. They are slogans that are taking root and program the approach to the native peoples. In our country, a motto: “civilization and barbarism” served to divide, to annihilate and reached the peak of the late 80s, to annihilate most of the original peoples, because they were “barbarism” and “civilization” came on the other side It is the contempt of the people and that I go to the experience of my land, that, “civilization and barbarism” that served to annihilate peoples is still in my homeland, with offensive words and then there is talk of second degree civilization, those who come of barbarism and today they are the “little balls, the Paraguayans, the umbrellas,

That is the experience of my country. And after the contempt, yesterday I was very sad to hear a mocking comment here, about that godly lord who carried the offerings with feathers on his head, tell me: what is the difference between wearing feathers on the head and the “tricorn” they use some officers of our dicasteries? (applause…). then we run the risk of proposing simply pragmatic measures, when on the contrary we are asked for a contemplation of the peoples, a capacity for admiration, to make a paradigmatic thought. If anyone comes with pragmatic intentions, pray the “sinful self”, turn and open your heart to a paradigmatic perspective that is born from the reality of the peoples. We have not come here to invent social development or cultural custody programs, museum-type, or of pastoral actions with the same non-contemplative style with which actions of the opposite sign are being carried out: deforestation, standardization, exploitation, they also make programs that do not respect poetry, the reality of the peoples that is sovereign. We also have to take care of worldliness in the way we demand changes in organization points of view, worldliness always infiltrates us and keeps us away from the poetry of the peoples. We come to contemplate, to understand, to serve the peoples. And we do it traveling a synodal path, we do it in synod. Not in round tables, not in conferences or in subsequent discussions, we do it in synod; because a synod is not a parliament, it is not a call center, It is not to show who has more power over the media and who has more power among the networks to impose any idea or any plan. This would form a congregationalist church, if we intend to search through the polls who has a majority. Or a sensationalist church so far away, so distant from our Holy Mother the Catholic Church, or as St. Ignatius liked to say: “our holy mother the hierarchical Church.” Synod is to walk together under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the main actor of the synod, please do not throw it out of the room. Consultations were made, discussed in the Episcopal Conferences, in the Pre-Synodal Council, the Instrumetum Laboris was prepared, which as you know is a martyr text, intended to be destroyed,

And then, what will be our work here to ensure that this presence of the Holy Spirit is fruitful. First of all, pray. Brothers and sisters I ask you to pray a lot. Reflect, dialogue, listen with humility, knowing that I do not know everything. And talk with courage, with parrhesia, even if I have to spend shame, say what I feel, discern and all this inside, guarding the fraternity that must exist here and to favor this attitude of reflection, prayer, discernment, of listening with humility and talk with courage, after four interventions we will have a space of four minutes of silence. Someone said, it is dangerous Father because they go to sleep. The experience of the Synod on young people, that we did the same was rather the opposite, that they tended to fall asleep during the interventions, at least on some, and they woke up during the silence. Finally, to be in the Synod is to be encouraged to enter a process. It is not occupying a space in the room. Enter a process. And ecclesial processes have a need. They need to be guarded, cared for, like the baby, accompanied at the beginning. Care with delicacy. They need warmth of community, they need warmth of mother and Church. An ecclesial process grows like this. Therefore, the attitude of respect, of taking care of the fraternal atmosphere, the air of intimacy is important. And it’s about not venting everything, as it comes, outside. But it is not about those who must inform of a secret more typical of the lodges than of the ecclesial community, but of delicacy and prudence in the communication that we will do outside. And this need to communicate out to so many people who want to know, to so many of our brothers,

But, a process like that of a Synod can be ruined a little if I leave what I think when I leave the room, I say mine, and then there is that characteristic that occurred in some synods: the synod inside and the synod from outside. The Synod inside that follows a path of mother Church, of care of the processes and the synod of outside, that by an information, given lightly, given with imprudence, moves informants ex officio to mistakes. Thank you for what you are doing, thank you for praying for each other, and encouragement. And please, let’s not lose our sense of humor.