Pope to Amazon bishops: Proclaim Gospel, fight injustice, defend nature

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Efforts to serve, defend and build up the Catholic community in the Amazon region must be centered on the proclamation of the Gospel, Pope Leo XIV said.

When the Catholic Church promotes “the right and duty” to care for the natural environment, it is not encouraging people to be “a slave or worshiper of nature,” since creation is a gift meant to lead one to praise God alone, said a message sent to the Amazonian bishops on the pope’s behalf by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.

The pope asked the region’s bishops “to keep in mind three dimensions that are interconnected in the pastoral work of that region: the mission of the church to proclaim the Gospel to all; the just treatment of the peoples who dwell there; and the care of the common home,” said the message, addressed to Peruvian Cardinal Pedro Barreto Jimeno, president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon.

The message was published by the Vatican Aug. 18 as about 90 bishops from the 105 dioceses and other church jurisdictions in the Amazon region were meeting in Bogotá, Colombia, ahead of a planned general assembly of the ecclesial conference — which includes religious and laypeople — in March 2026.

The experience of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon in 2019 demonstrated how essential it is for the church to listen to and involve clergy, religious and laity, the message said, but Cardinal Parolin said the pope hoped the Bogotá meeting would “help diocesan bishops and apostolic vicars concretely and effectively carry out their mission.”

Jesus must be proclaimed “with clarity and immense charity among the inhabitants of the Amazon, so that we may strive to give them fresh and pure the bread of the Good News and the heavenly food of the Eucharist, the only means to truly be the people of God and the body of Christ,” the message said.

Access to the Eucharist, especially in remote villages in the Amazon, was a major topic at the 2019 synod, leading to discussion and debate about the possibility of ordaining married men who are proven leaders of their Christian communities.

Pope Francis’ response, in his post-synodal exhortation, “Querida Amazonia,” was “to urge all bishops, especially those in Latin America, not only to promote prayer for priestly vocations, but also to be more generous in encouraging those who display a missionary vocation to opt for the Amazon region.”

Underlining the centrality of proclaiming faith in Christ, the message to the Bogotá meeting — published in Spanish, French, Portuguese and English — said the church’s history has confirmed “that wherever the name of Christ is preached, injustice recedes proportionally, for, as the Apostle Paul asserts, all exploitation of man by man disappears if we are able to receive one another as brothers and sisters.”

“Within this perennial doctrine, no less evident is the right and duty to care for the ‘home’ that God the Father has entrusted to us as diligent stewards,” the message continued.

The church’s defense of the environment, the message said, is “so that no one irresponsibly destroys the natural goods that speak of the goodness and beauty of the Creator nor, much less, subjects oneself to them as a slave or worshiper of nature, since things have been given to us in order to attain our end of praising God and thus obtaining the salvation of our souls.”