Pope appoints first cardinal from Amazon rainforest

Rio de Janeiro (AP) —The Archbishop of the Brazilian city of Manaus Leonard Steiner in front of Pope Francis on August 27 When kneeling down, Brazilian priests make history as the first lord to come from the Amazon region.

"The community feels that the distance between Rome and the Amazon has narrowed," Steiner told the Associated Press in a written interview. "Perhaps this is the reason for the Amazon people's joy in the movement of Pope Francis."

Steiner attributed his choice to the Pope's four priorities. He wants to do more missionary work in the Amazon and pay attention to the poor. To take care of Amazon "as our common home" and become a church "knowing how to contribute to the autonomy of the indigenous people".

The Amazon region, which spans nine countries, is larger than the European Union. According to the Catholic Church, there are 34 million inhabitants, of which more than 3 million are indigenous and belong to about 400 ethnic groups.

There is a religious lens where you can see a serious environmental struggle in this area as well. The Catholic Church's Social Environment Agenda has been the subject of controversy with many Brazilian Pentecostal Churches. They have a strong cacus in the Brazilian parliament and are accepting pro-aggro business beef cocus in the parliament. Both Pentecostal and supporters of the cattle industry belong to the political foundation of President Jail Borsonaro on the far right.

The Cardinal is the most senior priest under the Pope. Sometimes referred to as the "red hat" because of the color of his skull, he is an advisor to the Pope. More importantly, they work together to choose each of the 1.3 billion Catholic leaders in the world.

For church observers, it's no wonder Francis has finally nominated the Amazon's Cardinal. ..

POPEFRANCIS Environmental Awakening

According to Brazilian priest and historian Jose, Francis was in the plight of the vast Amazon Basin in 2007 at the Bishop's Council of the Latin American Bishops' Council. I was impressed at first. Oscar Beozzo. Francis was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires at the time and helped write the official account for the conference. The final text advocates the conservation of both the Amazon and the Antarctic.

Then, in 2019, Francis dedicated a culmination or entire conference of bishops in the region. His Environmental Awakening, embodied in the aperiodic "Praised Be" of 2015, advocates and portrays the protection of local biodiversity. Indigenous people as forest protectors. In 2018, we also visited Madrededios, a region of the Amazon in Peru that was devastated by illegal mining and felling.

The Pope created the Steiner Archbishop of Manaus shortly after the end of the Amazon Synod, and Francis clearly shares the same spirit and ideology as St. Francis, the origin of the Pope's name. I tapped the can. The Pope may have noticed Steiner as he was in a prominent position at the Brazilian Bishops' Council and was its secretary-general from 2011 to 2019. He also has a serious qualification in Rome and was the secretary-general of the Franciscan Pope Antonianum University in Rome, one of the major papal universities.

Catholic bishops from the Amazon region meet in Rome

Amazon Shinodo is part of a procession in Vatican, of three indigenous statues featuring naked pregnant women Notable for theft. Start of meeting. Conservative critics blew up Shinodo's "pagan" prayers and idols, and early one morning the thief entered a church in the Vatican area, where the statue was exhibited and thrown into the River Tiber.

Francis publicly apologized to the indigenous leaders who witnessed the theft, and the statue was drowned from the river in time for the end of the meeting. When Shinodo's father voted for the final recommendation, one was prominently exhibited in the Shinodo Hall.

The main thief, Austria's far-right activist Alexander Chuguel, has become like a celebrity in the traditionalist opposition to Francis because of the stunts. Since then, the stunt itself has embodied the dislike of conservatives and traditionalists towards the Pope. There, even crime is justified to save the believer from his "maverick".

Catholic Church and Amazon Rainforest

The Catholic Church and Amazon relationship began in 1617 when Francisco missionaries arrived in the coastal areas of Belem. Their opposition to the enslavement of the indigenous people strained relations with the Portuguese authorities, who expelled Catholic missionaries from the area three times last in 1759.

Initially, Catholic denominations needed missionaries to work in the Amazon and learn indigenous languages ​​to spread Christianity. The Jezus monks went to the point of creating Nengathu, a language based on the Tupi indigenous language, incorporating Portuguese and grammar. For some time it has become Amazon's most common language and continues to be spoken in some areas.

For the historian Beozzo, Pope Francis promotes a kind of "patriarchal system" in the Amazon. This is an effort to raise the status, similar to the five patriarchs such as Jerusalem and Constantinople in the early medieval period. Of the Amazon in the Catholic structure.

Beozzo says that the Amazon Regional Church Council was founded in 2020 and now Steiner's promotion, Synodo, is all part of Francis' goal to set the center stage for the world's largest rainforest. Mr. says.

"His choice begins at a very important moment when he sees the Amazon as an area with its own church dynamics. We welcome the excellence of the indigenous people in this area. "

Steiner, 71, is one of the 21 new Lords announced by Pope Francis in late May. They include Giorgio Marengo, the apostle of the Uranberter in Mongolia, Robert McElroy, the bishop of San Diego, and Peter Okparek, the bishop of Ekurobia in Nigeria.

Winfield was reported by Rome.

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