Francis approves the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon

[Stone]

Francis approves the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon


Vatican 2019

InfoVaticana [machine translated from the Spanish] | October 20, 2021

The Holy Father has canonically erected the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon as a public ecclesiastical legal person, reports the Vatican Press Room through a statement.

Francis, says the note, formalized the creation of this Ecclesiastical Conference on October 9 during the audience granted to the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, with the aim of “promoting common pastoral action of the ecclesiastical circumscriptions of the Amazonia and encourage a greater inculturation of the faith in said territory ”, although its statutes have not yet been approved.

The Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon was requested from the Holy See during an assembly held from June 26 to 29, 2020 among the Bishops of the Amazon interested in the project, stemming from an initiative proposed in the Final Document of the Synod on the Amazon, which was held at the Vatican in October 2019.

In their point 115, the Synod Fathers proposed “to create an episcopal body that promotes synodality among the churches of the region, that helps to delineate the Amazonian face of this Church and that continues the task of finding new paths for the evangelizing mission, especially incorporating the proposal of integral ecology, thus strengthening the physiognomy of the Amazonian Church ”.

“It would be a permanent and representative episcopal body that promotes synodality in the Amazon region, articulated with CELAM, with its own structure, in a simple organization and also articulated with REPAM. In this way, it can be the effective channel for assuming, from the territory of the Latin American and Caribbean Church, many of the proposals that emerged in this Synod. It would be the link that articulates ecclesial and socio-environmental networks and initiatives on a continental and international level ”.

Following the proposal made on June 29, 2020, the Pope agreed to study the initiative and commissioned the Congregation for Bishops "to closely monitor and accompany the process, providing all possible help to give the body an adequate appearance."