After long discussions, Pope Francis published Wednesday a plea on the Amazon, in which he denounces "injustice" and the "crime" sown by companies, which he accuses of devastating this territory. In this much awaited text, however, he dismissed the controversial proposal to authorize the ordination of married indigenous people, advanced by Latin American bishops to combat the shortage of priests in the region.

In this "apostolic exhortation" entitled "Querida Amazonia" (Dear Amazonia), the Pope delivers a message that is meant to be universal in the form of four "dreams". At the risk of disappointing, he does not mention any of the most concrete and daring proposals made in October by an assembly of bishops from the nine countries of the Amazon.

After three weeks of debate in the Vatican, they asked the Pope to consider opening the priesthood to married men, relaunching the debate for deacon women, or defining the concept of "ecological sin".

Lack of priests

On the most controversial issue for the Church - allowing pious men with a stable married life to become priests - the 83-year-old pope has not changed his deep conviction that the priesthood must be a call from God, a donation".

Appointing laity to fill staffing problems that do not fit into his logic, even if he encouraged a debate, the first Jesuit pope in history preferred to "exhort all the bishops, especially those from Latin America ", to send more missionaries to the Amazon.

The Church is faced with a glaring lack of itinerant priests, the only ones able to give communion, an essential sacrament of Christian doctrine.

Francis nonetheless encourages lay people, men and women, through training, to continue to perform crucial ecclesial services. He paid tribute to the essential role of secular women in transmitting the faith in communities in the Amazon. "They should be able to access functions, including ecclesial services," writes François, without being more specific.

Pressure from Benoit XVI on the pontiff?

In mid-January, a book was published in France denouncing the conclusions of the synod and passionately defending the celibacy of priests. Co-signed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and ultra-traditionalist Guinean cardinal Robert Sarah, it caused a sensation, giving the impression of pressure exerted on Pope Francis.

The Vatican has however taken care to specify that the papal text on the Amazon, published Wednesday, was finalized in late December by the pope, before the release of the controversial book.

In his text, the pope insists on the beauty of the Amazon rites with their "mystique of sacred admiration for nature" and asks not to "rush" to "qualify them as superstition or paganism". These rites are sometimes mocked during the synod by some Catholic traditionalists - a tiny group had even stolen sacred Amazonian statues from a church to throw them into the Tiber.

"Injustice and crime"

In his document, François has much more passionate accents in denouncing "the companies, national and international, which destroy the Amazon and do not respect the rights of indigenous peoples". "The names that correspond to them: injustice and crime," he added.

"The recourse to means far from any ethics is frequent, like the fact of sanctioning protests, including by taking the life of the indigenous people who oppose the projects," he deplored.

Economic relations become "an instrument that kills" when "the authorities give free access to the wood industries, mining and petroleum projects, and other activities that devastate forests and pollute the environment," he said.

The Pope recalled that "the protection of people and ecosystems are inseparable", a concept which he summarizes by the expression of "integral" ecology.

In his text, riddled with references to documents from local Amazonian churches but also many poems, he appropriates this commentary coming from Colombia: "We ask that the mistreatment and destruction of Mother Earth (name given by indigenous to the planet). The Earth has blood and it’s bleeding, the multinationals have cut the veins to Mother Earth. ”

Faced with injustice, Pope Francis also calls for "indignation" and "asking for forgiveness" for a "shameful past" of abuses against the natives. Citing for example their suffering at the time of the exploitation of rubber in the Venezuelan Amazon, he called on all humans to get involved, including political leaders.

With AFP

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