Pax Christi International launches statement in support of Vatican Synod on the Amazon

Source: Pax Christi International

The Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazonian Region, announced by Pope Francis in 2017, will be held at the Vatican on 6-27 of October 2019. The meeting comes at a critical time for indigenous communities and the environment in Amazonia, which is experiencing an onslaught of violence from mining companies and settlers destroying the rainforests at an unprecedented rate.

Recently, the Instrumentum Laboris for the Amazon: New Paths for the Church and for Integral Ecology, the working document to be discussed during the Synod, was published.

Through a statement released today, Pax Christi International, together with its members and partners from Europe, the US, Canada and Latin America, expresses its support for the Synod and post-Synod process, welcomes the working document and shares with the Vatican, the universal and local church points for consideration for its reflections and discernment.

Pax Christi International will share the document with the Secretariat of the Vatican preparing the Synod, bishops who will attend the meeting, networks in which the peace movement is active, and Catholic media. Pax Christi International is also planning to attend parallel activities organised during the Synod by civil society with a Guatemalan delegation, including an indigenous representative.

Read the statement in ENGLISH

and SPANISH