Panamazone Synod Meeting

by AmormeusFeb 18, 2020Blog, Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation, Pastoral and Social0 comments

By Pastoral Popular Mexico

On January 14, Sr. Ivonne, Sr. María Elena Corripio, Sr. Covadonga Suárez, and Sister Tere Vázquez along with the staff of Casa Claudio were in attendance at some conferences pertaining to the Panamazone Synod.

The speakers included Saltillo’s Bishop Don Raúl Vera, Indian Theology Rev. Eleazar López and Sister Ma. Del Socorro Gutiérrez.

Revd. Miguel Álvarez and Javier Ávila served as monitors and coordinators of this event.

The Conference was held at the house of Solidarity and included a large group of priests, religious and committed laypeople.

Rev. Eleazar placed the group on the historical route of the Indigenous Pastoral until we reached this Synod, which is seen as the culmination of the indigenous struggle; it appears that our world is burning the living conditions existing in our world.

The Church has been an extension of Europe for 500 years.

In 1889 the first Latin American Synod was carried out. In time, the same thing began to emerge in America, in which Don Samuel was a very important actor.

The Panamanian peoples are unknown, nomadic peoples who began to mobilize and dream of another Church since 1994.

In our reality, indigenous peoples are accepted as long as they are ornaments and folklore, but as soon as they make proposals about anything, they are no longer accepted.

In the synod, new paths were sought as Church including the experience of integral ecology and living in harmony with the earth.

Three important moments were realized in the Synod:

PREPARATION

Mauricio López reports: 86,000 voices from 9 countries (Instrumentum laboris) were consulted. It is necessary to read this booklet to understand the people and their proposals.

SYNOD

All sectors were active; the difficulty of language and the limited time of 4min. allotted for speech, caused some difficulty; the Pope asked for a lot of listening.

There was a moment when the Pope approached the natives to have a better dialogue with them. At the end of the Synod, they wrote him a letter expressing how they felt about him and how they felt in relation to everyone else.

The Pact of the Catacombs document, both the first and the last one, form the basis and culmination of the Latin American church pact.

These are an integral part of our faith, they are not optional subjects.

“The gospel of Jesus is received in the gospel of the poor.”

LISTEN TO SERVE

Sister Socorro attended on behalf of AMERINDIA, she shared more with us from that basis and as a religious woman. They talked about massacres, fires, and abuse during the panel with indigenous people and how the SIMI organization is really committed to them. The Brazilian bishops were very well organized.

As women, we lack a strong, clear and well-defined proposal of what we want our role in the Church to be.

If the ecclesial structure does not change and the priests do not change their form of clerical and macho leadership, nothing can be done.

It is necessary that this lived experience start permeating our society, it is very necessary to disseminate the content.

DON RAUL VERA: He participated as part of SICSAL outside the Synod. He noted that the original peoples have a reserve of HUMANISM that is what will save us all.

He told us that a group of indigenous people went to the top and said to those who were below, there will come a time when you will forget the man and we, who are up here, are going to remind you who the man is. The example of Jonah at Nineveh is a clear example of this. The people of Nineveh were destructing themselves, just as the people of Mexico are destructing themselves as they are inside sin.

This Synod germinated in Puerto Maldonado (Dominican) listening Amazon, with the visit of the Pope. It shows us new paths of a personal, cultural, ecological conversion and finally a synodal conversion. Clericalism is our downfall as a Church.

It is necessary to download the Instrumentum Laboris from the Internet while the new papal document on the Synod arrives, it will help us to understand better what we are asked to do as Church.

Points to go in-depth

A spirituality of integral ecology
To have a proposal as women to present to the Church in general.

The CLAR played a very important role where life cries out… but out here, we do not hear anyone crying out for anything…

Church do not allow power to concentrate on one hand; break the concentration of power, and use the diaconate as a service with indigenous categories.

Finally, Rev. Eleazar gave us the KEYS of the document.

Generally, these working documents are only given to bishops, but this time they were given to everyone, they were built in dialogue.

There was an orthodox group that looked after the doctrine of the church so that the needs of the Amazon did not affect the doctrine.

The text goes from the base to the head. The Pope wrote a document called “Episcopal Commnium” where he tells his brother Bishops to stop feeling owners and masters of the truth; God also acts in others, no need to assume an attitude of teaching, but in an attitude of dialogue and listening.

He asked to place conversations instead of placing change, and he placed some conversations the same way:

Pastoral Conversion – We are shepherds and sheep of the only pastor; Jesus (it is not that one teaches and the others are taught) it is reciprocal, being Samaritans, to have a dialogue about this conversion is the responsibility of us all. LISTEN AND ANNOUNCE.
Cultural conversion – Look at the others not as the enemy, but as people who possess wisdom and values. Relativize the dominant, European and Western culture. Intercultural Church.
Ecological conversion – The Pope calls it the Common Home, but in the end that is one thing and the Indians call it Earth, and the Pope released a book called “Our Mother Earth”, this bothered many because he retook the indigenous conception.
Synodal Conversion – Not only Hierarchical church.