“QUERIDA AMAZONIA”: A New Face of the Church in the Heart of Latin America to Inspire Integral Conversion on the Planet

Abstract

Coming from the “end of the world”, from the south of the planet, Pope Francis first challenged global consciousness with his Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, then turned the attention of the Church and people of good will to the Amazon region. The convening of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region was an initiative deeply attuned to the climate crisis, one of the most pressing challenges of our time. Faithful to the Second Vatican Council and the spirituality of liberation, Francis invites the whole world to admire and recognize the Amazon region as a sacred mystery as well as to heed the voices of its poor communities, precisely those whose resistance has preserved the rainforest. Using an exploratory bibliographical methodology, this article aims to contribute to the reflection on how 21st-century Liberation Theology might address challenges, with an emphasis on the ecological crisis central to Pope Francis’s magisterium, particularly articulated in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia: To the People of God and to All Persons of Good Will. As a result, we tried to demonstrate that Francis, in Querida Amazonia, proposes that a Church with an Amazonian face, located in the heart of Latin America, without forgetting the feminine protagonism, should be an inspiration for integral conversion on the planet.

1. Introduction

With the convening of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Meeting in October 2019, four years after the publication of the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, Pope Francis has once again called the world to awaken esteem and care for this Earth, which is “ours”, inviting all people to admire and recognize it as a sacred mystery. As the climate crisis deepens, Pope Francis’ provocation must be revisited so that it may truly inspire the search for new paths of reflection and action, enabling a Church with an “Amazonian face” to inspire integral conversion (Pope Francis 2015, p. 218) in this time of great planetary crisis.

Turning his attention to Latin America, more specifically to the Amazon region, Francis articulates in Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia his dreams of building justice and fighting for the rights of the poor, particularly the native peoples impoverished by the system of social and economic organization founded on capitalist exploitation. Furthermore, these are also dreams of commitment to preserving the Amazon’s cultural and ecological richness, which has been threatened by the predominance of a techno-scientific mindset pushing the planet toward extinction. Finally, Francis expresses his ecclesial dream of Christian communities deeply identified with the Amazonian reality and committed to liberation from its afflictions.

“Coming from the end of the world”, as Francis declared in his first address, the first Latin American pope decided to confront ecological challenges, one amongst the most urgent of the 21st century, while remaining faithful to the guidelines of the Second Vatican Council, and also to the spirituality that developed in Latin America with the reception of the Council. The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’—enthusiastically received not only by Christians but by many concerned with the gravity of the ecological crisis—did not forget the poor, that is, the preferential option for the poor, proposed to the Church by the Latin American magisterium, especially in Medellín and Puebla.

In the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, the word “poor” occurs 50 times. Many of them (18 occurrences) are in the first chapter, in which Francis highlights contemporary contradictions, especially related to the ecological problem. Fundamentally, according to Francis in the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (49), the ecological crisis is a social one as he notes in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia (8): “it also has to be made clear that ‘a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’” […] (Pope Francis 2020, p. 8).

It should be noted, however, that for Francis, the impoverished are not a passive mass to be treated as “objects of charity” (Malvezzi 2023, p. 85). Rooted to the typical methodology of Liberation Theology, Pope Francis trusts in the power of grassroots movements to address socio-environmental crises: “for Francis, there will be no fraternal society without the organization and socio-environmental struggle of the discarded and impoverished” (Malvezzi 2023, p. 87); thus, a renewed missionary impulse implies “The spiritual savour of being a people” (Pope Francis 2013, pp. 268–74).

The general aim of this article is to contribute to the reflection on how Liberation Theology might address 21st-century challenges, with a focus on the ecological issue central to Pope Francis’s magisterium, particularly in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia, considering that the Amazon region is at the epicenter of the current climate crisis—as both a challenge and part of the solution. In pursuit of this goal, we outline this article as follows: first, through dialog with science, we explore the mystery of life in the Amazon region, a product of profound ecological interaction and a privileged expression of the unconditional love that moves the universe. Next, we highlight some elements that help visualize the contradictions of modernity that have led to the current environmental crisis. Then, in topics 4, 5 and 6, we argue that Francis, in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia, proposes that a Church with an Amazonian face, located in the heart of Latin America, without forgetting the feminine protagonism, should be an inspiration for integral conversion on the planet.

In conclusion, we believe we have demonstrated that Pope Francis’s ecclesiology—especially as considered in the Exhortation Querida Amazonia, situated in continuity with the reception of the Second Vatican Council by the Magisterium and Latin American Theology, attentive to confrontation of new planetary challenges—inspires an integral conversion, that is, a change in attitude toward life, which is the result of the recovery of fraternity with creation, once ruptured by the emergence of the technocratic paradigm and the contradictions of modern anthropocentrism (Pope Francis 2015, pp. 106–36). This integral conversion is necessary to the extent that it envisions universal communion (Pope Francis 2015, p. 220). It is worth noting that throughout the Encyclical, Pope Francis mentions the expression “integral conversion” only once, opting in other similar instances for the expression “ecological conversion”, which gives our article, in dialog with the Pope’s intuition, an epistemological frontier character.

To develop and support this reflection, we used a documentary, bibliographical, and exploratory methodology, choosing as a fundamental reference documents from the Pope Francis’s Magisterium. The analysis of the documents was conducted in dialog with Latin American authors associated with Liberation Theology, including Leonardo Boff and Gustavo Gutiérrez. The exploratory nature of the article indicates that the topic is open and that our article, in the form of an essay, is a contribution to the state of the question. It is worth noting that the late Pope Francis, who passed away in 2025, did not have the opportunity to further reflect on an Amazonian ecclesiology face—which we have considered in this paper.

2. The Amazon Region: A Sign of God, a Sacred Mystery

The Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia is the outcome of the Amazon Region Synod whose final document was published under the title The Amazon: new paths for the church and for an integral ecology (Amazon Synod 2019). The fruit of a synodal process initiated by the Pontiff’s 2018 visit to the Amazon region, this document constitutes a guide for conversion at multiple levels: integral, pastoral, cultural, ecological, and synodal.

Conversion is fundamental to our journey in the world, since it is tied to the freedom into which God created us. We can say, inspired by a beautiful passage from the book Deus no escuro by Valter Hugo Mãe, that conversion is dear to God because, like a mother, God raises children for freedom and, in doing so, faces the risk of them straying away from the vocation to which they are called:

God is exactly like mothers, setting children free and seeking them eternally. God will wait with a heart aching, watching for any sign that announces their presence, their return.

God is exactly like mothers, who nurture and then step back, at a distance that might seem to mean they are no longer needed, and God, like them, only loves beyond any flaw or failure with ever-deepening longing, yet does not know their way, does not know the path they took and can only pray they do not get lost or lose their will to return.

(Mãe 2024, p. 125)1

God, who is unconditional love, helps us to understand literature, liberates the children yet remains watchful, hoping they will return converted to the unconditional love that defines God. Conversion is a perpetual demand of faith in God, who, having created us for freedom, constantly faces the risks of our straying. Sin is the risk of freedom; we live torn between faith in the power of love and love of power. As Valter Hugo Mãe writes in his theopoetic vision, God, as love,

scatters signs everywhere. God warns against all and creates memories, so the children may remember God even in places they have never been, mapping their way out of every labyrinth.

(Mãe 2024, p. 125)

The Amazon Region is one of these landmarks—a great sign from God—a sacred mystery revealing this unconditional, maternal love. It is interesting to note that theology can make this claim with such conviction today because science has provided ample evidence for such an elaboration. In a scientific assessment report INPE (National Institute for Space Research) researcher Antonio Donato Nobre demonstrates, on The Future Climate of Amazonia: Scientific Assessment Report (Nobre 2014), that the Amazon Region is fundamental for sustaining life on the planet:

As will be seen in this work, rainforests are much more than an agglomeration of trees, a passive repository of biodiversity or simple carbon storage. Their living technology and dynamics of interaction with the environment gives them a certain power over the elements, an innate and resilient ability to condition the climate. Thus, forests condition the climate according to what suits them best and they thereby generate stability and create a comfort zone, a shelter which enables human societies to flourish.

(Nobre 2014, p. 9)

Natural reality, Nobre argues, is rich and complex, as well as full of mysteries and secrets, which are gradually unveiled to those who—unlike others just focused on exploitation, only seeking profit and personal gain—approach it with reverence to the perception of its grandeur present in the dynamics of life. In his report, the author details how tree transpiration has a role in forming “flying rivers” which guarantees a balanced climate and soil fertility.

A large tree can pump from the soil and transpire over a thousand liters of water in a single day. Amazonia is home to hundreds of billions of trees in its forests. Twenty billion tons of water are transpired per day by all the trees in the Amazon basin. As a whole, these trees—those benevolent silent green structures of nature—act like geysers and spout a vertical river of vapor into the air that is even greater than the Amazon River.

(Nobre 2014, p. 13).

The trees thus function as elevators that lift and launch water high into the atmosphere; this water can later return to the ground as rain, transferring a portion of the built-in solar energy in the water vapor to potential energy in the water that fills the reservoirs of hydroelectric dams.

(Nobre 2014, p. 14)

This transpiration-condensation cycle mechanism, mediated by forests and shaped by oceans and air pressure, forms a complex biome that regulates the planet’s climate. But the Amazon region is no virgin forest, as decades of ideological narratives to encourage exploitation have falsely claimed. In the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis critiques this distorted “mystique of the Amazon”, which has misrepresented the Amazon Region.

It is well known that, ever since the final decades of the last century, the Amazon region has been presented as an enormous empty space to be filled, a source of raw resources to be developed, a wild expanse to be domesticated. None of this recognizes the rights of the original people; it simply ignores them as if they did not exist or acts as if the land on which they live do not belong to them.

(Pope Francis 2020, p. 12)

The fruit of great ecological interaction, the Amazon region is, in fact, a mother, because it generates and sustains life. Beyond the trees, there is a vital interaction with the environment established by the forest’s inhabitants.

Eliane Brum, a Brazilian journalist deeply passionate about the Amazon region and profoundly affected by the destructive forces threatening it, relocated to Altamira with the purpose of listening to and amplifying—through literature and journalism—the voices of Indigenous peoples, quilombolas2 and beiradeiros or ribeirinhos3 who have been actively preserving the forest environment while living integrated into the life of it. These native groups should be called “forest-peoples,” for they do not just belong to the forest, they are the forest “because being a riverside dweller, a quilombola, or an indigenous person goes far beyond any legal status—it means understanding oneself as nature itself” (Brum 2021, p. 97).

Drawing on research grounded in “historical ecology,” Brum argues that “parts of the Amazon region are cultural forests, meaning they were shaped over thousands of years mainly by humans, but also by non-humans, these we call ‘animals’, through their interaction with the environment” (Brum 2021, p. 22).

In tune with this perception, the Final Document of the Amazon Synod, which offers a theological interpretation, affirms that in the Amazon region there is a pluricultural and multiethnic reality where peoples pursue good living, a harmonious way of life comparable to the Beatitudes:

It is a matter of living in harmony with oneself, with nature, with human beings and with the Supreme Being, since there is intercommunication throughout the cosmos; here there are neither exclusions nor those who exclude, and here a full life for all can be projected. Such an understanding of life is characterized by the interconnection and harmony of relationships between water, territory and nature, community life and culture, God and various spiritual forces. For them, ‘good living’ means understanding the centrality of the transcendent relational character of human beings and of creation, and implies ‘good acting’. This integral approach is expressed in their own way of organizing that starts from the family and the community, and embraces a responsible use of all the goods of creation.

(Amazon Synod 2019, n. 9).

What the original people and their descendants have known, based on ancestral wisdom and what cutting-edge science developed from the perspective of the ecological paradigm has more recently also affirmed, is that collaboration is the driving force behind life’s vitality—what moves the universe is unconditional love. Advanced scientific studies have led us to a new perception—one that is surprisingly in tune with ancient original wisdom—revealing that collaboration dominates in nature because, as scientists who work from this perspective conclude, without collaboration there is no complexity, which is the very foundation of our existence. Love is a unifying force with tremendous restorative capacity (Nobre 2014). We can affirm that this realization finds its counterpart in Christian spirituality, whose truth of faith is that God—who is maker, savior and life-giver—is essentially Love (1 Jo 4,8.16). “God acts exclusively as love,” affirms Spanish theologian Andrés Torres Queiruga (2001, p. 4), whose fundamental theological conviction is grounded in Dei Verbum—the Dogmatic Constitution on revelation (at the Second Vatican Council).

God creates for freedom, yet never imposes. God withdraws, contracts and renounces all-power so that creatures in their freedom might choose the path of life through love. As Valter Hugo Mãe compared, God is like a mother who maintains a respectful distance, loving unconditionally, hoping the children of creation will not lose their way or their will to return. God’s mothering, as the writer expressed so well, manifests through the signs scattered everywhere.

3. Modern Contradictions: An Age of Enlightenment and Blindness

However, we should not forget that our era, born from modern developments that proclaimed themselves enlightened, has become an age of blindness more than any other. Supported by an exploitative way of life, Modernity has undermined its trust in God-given oblative love while promoting trust in competition under the law of the strongest. This selfishness—the exclusive focus on one’s own interests without regard to otherness—leads, as we can clearly see, to death without resurrection.

In his Latin American anthropological reflection, Leonardo Boff (2005) identifies two human ways of being in the world: the “way-of-being-in the labor world” and the “way-of-being of care”. In the way-of-being-in the labor world the human being is rational, a being of objective detachment, interacting with nature only to understand its laws and adapt them to human desires and needs, thereby transforming the world. In the way-of-being of care the human being, while remaining rational, fully embraces their embodied nature. In this way, humans do not relate to nature as an object, without the intention to dominate it, they establish a partnership with it. Unlike the way-of-being-in the labor world based on objective distancing, care presupposes closeness, harmony and acceptance.

According to the phenomenological analysis that underpins several of his historical works, Leonardo Boff shows that we have suffered the consequences of a rupture between work and care, the result of revolutions that have their roots in the Neolithic Period, when the development of agriculture and animal husbandry enabled human settlement. This rupture was slowly consolidated, until reaching its peak with the Industrial Revolution. For Leonardo Boff, with industrialization and its consequences, a way-of-being-in the labor world’s dictatorship was established, with a human being system of intervention and production based on exploiting both nature and other human beings. Among the contradictions of this way of organizing life are anthropocentrism and patriarchalism. As Boff notes: “This power-domination attitude of the world embodies the masculine dimension in both men and women” (Boff 2005, p. 31).

Nowadays, carelessness has become radical. Analyzing our global scenario, Pedro A. Ribeiro de Oliveira (2025) says that we are facing the beginning of a new dark age caused by three converging crises: (1) Climate and environmental catastrophes with worldwide impact; (2) Collapse of the U.S.-led world order, risking nuclear escalation in regional wars; (3) the outbreak of a new form of capitalism characterized by broken solidarity of the few bonds between rich and poor, which favors the emergence of neofascism. In this scenario, even major religions increasingly align with the neofascist ideology present in ruling oligarchies of many countries (Oliveira 2025).

Therefore, we can say that the civilizational crisis we are going through demands reclaiming the way-of-being of care. As emphasized in the Final Document of the Amazon Synod (Amazon Synod 2019), we need an integral conversion, and the Amazon region certainly has a central role to play in this process. As Brum (2021) reminds us, during this era of human-caused climate collapse and accelerated mass extinction, the world’s largest rainforest has become the planet’s epicenter. The Amazon region—the author reveals—stands as one of the frontlines where the climate war is being waged as a massacre, due to the disproportion of forces.

With that said, we move on to the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia, seeking to demonstrate that this document, composed from the reception of the conclusions of the Final Document of the Amazon Synod, envisions a face of the Church that, situated in the heart of Latin America, can inspire, with its testimony, an integral conversion (social, cultural, ecological), not only at the ecclesial level, but rather signaling the need for conversion on a broader level.

4. An Integral Conversion for the Preservation of Life in the Amazon Region and the Planet

The Final Document of the Amazon Synod (Amazon Synod 2019) calls for a new stance toward culture, nature, and the very way of being Church. It urges us to heed both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor in the Amazon region—ravaged by attacks against nature and the lives of its most vulnerable. The document proposes that integral conversion be inspired by a mystical spirituality, in the style of St Francis of Assisi: “a model of integral conversion lived with Christian happiness and joy (cf. Pope Francis 2015, p. 12)” (Amazon Synod 2019, para. 17). Reverence for the creator through the grandeur of creation, along with a radical commitment to universal fraternity, are fundamental elements of this spirituality of liberation.

The cry of the forest-peoples and that of the forest itself, resistant to the advance of “progress” sponsored by an elite—whom Indigenous leaders call “peoples of merchandise” or “forest-eaters” (Brum 2021, p. 17)—are today signs that show us the paths toward an integral conversion. Among these signs of strength of resistance in the Amazon region, according to Brum, are powerful voices of women leaders who are gaining prominence against annihilation. Some, like Sônia Guajajara and Joenia Wapichana, now hold places in institutional instances of power while others confront miners, loggers, and corporations in direct, on-the-ground resistance to defend their people and the forest. Brum states that, in recent years, “women have become the primary force of resistance against the ambition of all the governments’ attempts to dam the rivers of the Tapajós basin, a river so blue it makes your eyes burn” (Brum 2021, p. 41). With regard to the Munduruku women, Brum makes an interesting comment with strong political content:

They move together, bringing their children to what urban activists would call “direct action”. The children learn with them, by example, how to resist and act collectively. These children are raised in community, cared for, fed and educated with trust in the group.

(Brum 2021, p. 42)

The Amazon, as Pope Francis affirms, must be a space for dialog with its native peoples, fostering forms of communion and shared struggle. Listening to their words, hopes and fears should be the most authoritative priority at any table of dialog on the Amazon region (Pope Francis 2020, p. 26). The key words of the Church’s synodal reflection on the Amazon region, reaffirmed by Pope Francis in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia, are “inculturation”, “ecology” and “pastoral presence”. Francis translates the work of the Synod into bold dreams meant to inspire and mobilize us. These dreams include the struggle for justice and the defense of the rights of the poorest—whose voices must be heard; the recognition and celebration of the Amazon region’s rich cultural diversity; the protection of its vast ecological wealth; and a vision of the Church that is deeply incarnated in the Amazonian reality, embracing its unique identity and characteristics.

The dialog between cultural realities is a major challenge. According to Francis, intercultural encounters should be an opportunity to learn from ethnic groups that have developed a strong connection with nature and sense of community (Pope Francis 2020, p. 36). The difference that marks identity must not divide: “Identity and dialogue are not enemies” (Pope Francis 2020, p. 37). The encounter with those unlike ourselves enriches, isolation impoverishes (Pope Francis 2020, p. 37).

As the biblical tradition reminds us, the possibility of creating unity in diversity is one of the most important signs of the Holy Spirit’s work among us. And, as the biblical narrative in the book of the Acts of the Apostles (2,1–13) attests—on the Pentecost Sunday—the assembled disciples were surprised by a mighty rushing wind that filled the house where they were, and by tongues as of fire that fell upon them, giving them the gift of speaking in other tongues and being understood by those who listened—perplexed and amazed—in their own languages. For Francis, inculturation is a difficult (but necessary) path: “What is needed is courageous openness to the novelty of the Spirit, who is always able to create something new with the inexhaustible riches of Jesus Christ” (Pope Francis 2020, p. 69).

Through dialog with native Amazonian peoples, we can deepen our ecological sensitivity, Francis continues. We can learn from the original peoples to contemplate the Amazon region as a mystery that surpasses us; to love the Amazon region not only with the aim of exploiting it—and may this love lead us to an intimate union and enable us to see the Amazon as a mother (Pope Francis 2020, p. 55). Amazonizar-se (to amazonize oneself) is a verb used by Eliane Brum, which is in line with the movement referred to by Francis:

Amazonizar-se, as a verb, goes beyond the forest. It is a movement to become again, to break away, in the sense of the one who has broken away by placing himself outside of nature, by ceasing to be part of the organic whole of a living planet. The most sensitive ones feel this tearing in their guts. It is no coincidence that many people feel “different” when they are “close” to nature.

(Brum 2021, p. 50)

5. The Dream of a Church with an Amazonian Face

Contact with native people (forest-people) should inspire a new way of being Church. Francis dreamed of this Church with an Amazonian face:

The Church is called to journey alongside the people of the Amazon region. In Latin America, this journey found privileged expression at the Bishops’ Conference in Medellín (1968) and its application to the Amazon region at Santarem (1972), […] followed by Puebla (1979), Santo Domingo (1992) and Aparecida (2007). The journey continues, and missionary efforts, if they are to develop a Church with an Amazonian face, need to grow in a culture of encounter towards “a multifaceted harmony”. […] But for this incarnation of the Church and the Gospel to be possible, the great missionary proclamation must continue to resound.

(Pope Francis 2020, p. 61)

The proclamation of the Gospel must focus on the kerygma: “It proclaims a God who infinitely loves every man and woman and has revealed this love fully in Jesus Christ, crucified for us and risen in our lives” (Pope Francis 2020, p. 64). That is to say, God is present in life and communicates with us. Through the incarnation and suffering, God reveals that outside of love, there is no salvation. Accepting the message, when it promotes a personal encounter with the Lord, results in charity. According to Francis, “the kerygma and fraternal charity constitute the great synthesis of the whole content of the Gospel, to be proclaimed unceasingly in the Amazon region” (Pope Francis 2020, p. 65).

Evangelization, however, must take into account that grace presupposes culture, and that the gift of God is already incarnate in the culture of those who receive it. The Bible, agrees Queiruga (2001), is a midwife, helping to reveal the presence of God who is already in everyone, in everything. Therefore, it is essential to seek paths of inculturation that begin above all with listening to the peoples of the Amazon region: the Church “needs to listen to its ancestral wisdom, listen once more to the voice of its elders, recognize the values present in the way of life of the original communities, and recover the rich stories of its peoples” (Pope Francis 2020, p. 70). It is necessary to appreciate the spirituality of original peoples.

Inculturation elevates and fulfills. Certainly, we should esteem the indigenous mysticism that sees the interconnection and interdependence of the whole of creation, the mysticism of gratuitousness that loves life as a gift, the mysticism of a sacred wonder before nature and all its forms of life.

At the same time, though, we are called to turn this relationship with God present in the cosmos into an increasingly personal relationship with a “Thou” who sustains our lives and wants to give them a meaning […].

(Pope Francis 2020, p. 73)

In addition, the inculturation of the Gospel in the amazon region must also integrate the social dimension and address the situation of poverty and abandonment of the Amazon region’s inhabitants. An inculturated spirituality, adds the Pontiff, must bear witness to holiness with an Amazonian face, as well as paying attention to popular Catholicism and indigenous religious manifestations. It must still be centered on the only God, while at the same time looking attentive to the daily needs of the people. Above all, it must take care not to associate Christ as an enemy of joy or as someone indifferent to human aspirations and anxieties. Francis affirms, echoing the Exhortation Gaudete et Exultate, that people must not be deprived of energy, vitality or joy (Pope Francis 2020, p. 80).

Additionally, the effort to inculturate the liturgy, the way of carrying out ecclesial organization and ministry is part of Pope Francis’ ecclesial dream of a Church called to walk with Amazonian peoples. The liturgy should not emphasize a discipline that excludes and alienates, but instead, grounded in the mystery of the Incarnation, it must communicate an approachable and merciful God. It must be accessible to all, especially the poor, and be open to receiving elements from the indigenous experience, joining with the people in their reverence for creation, in valuing rest and celebration (Pope Francis 2020, pp. 81–84).

There are many challenges for the Church’s pastoral presence in the Amazon—ecclesial organization and ministries are among the most important. While recognizing the need to ensure the presence of ordained ministers in order to guarantee the celebration of the Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian life, considering the specific conditions of the region (vastness, remote areas, cultural diversity, serious social problems, isolation of certain communities), the Final Document of the Synod emphasizes the need to recognize the leadership of lay people.

A Church of Amazonian features requires the stable presence of mature and lay leaders endowed with authority and familiar with the languages, cultures, spiritual experience and communal way of life in the different places, but also open to the multiplicity of gifts that the Holy Spirit bestows on every one. For wherever there is a particular need, he has already poured out the charisms that can meet it. This requires the Church to be open to the Spirit’s boldness, to trust in, and concretely to permit, the growth of a specific ecclesial culture that is distinctively lay. The challenges in the Amazon region demand of the Church a special effort to be present at every level, and this can only be possible through the vigorous, broad and active involvement of the laity.

(Pope Francis 2020, p. 94)

In this context, the role of women becomes especially prominent. Referring to the preservation of faith in Amazonian communities, Pope Francis acknowledges the decisive contribution of women:

In the Amazon region, there are communities that have long preserved and handed on the faith even though no priest has come their way, even for decades. This could happen because of the presence of strong and generous women who, undoubtedly called and prompted by the Holy Spirit, baptized, catechized, prayed and acted as missionaries. For centuries, women have kept the Church alive in those places through their remarkable devotion and deep faith. Some of them, speaking at the Synod, moved us profoundly by their testimony.

(Pope Francis 2020, p. 99)

6. Female Protagonism/Leadership in Amazon Region and Its Ecclesial Implications

The Amazon region is a woman, states Eliane Brum, and the choice of the word “virgin,” often associated with the condition of the forest, expresses the power dynamic to which the Amazon region is subjected.

One cannot repeat the word “virgin” so many times and move on as if talking about the price of bread. “Virgin” is not just any word, because it is flesh. In the Amazonia, as in the lives of women, it is intimately linked to destruction. Not only the destruction of a barrier like the hymen, but destruction that occurs through the control and domination of bodies. The choice of the word “virgin” to describe the forest and other ecosystems not yet fully dominated by men, as a representation of the fascination with a “natural,” “wild,” and “untouched” body, sheds light on the power relations that push the Amazon ever closer to the point of no return.

(Brum 2021, p. 34)

Analyzing the rise to power of far-right political groups and drawing on her experience in the Amazon region, Brum affirms that in this region, both women and the forest are subjected to a logic of violation, possession, and exploitation. Stories of rape, like that of the quilombola Socorro, are not exceptions. Handed over by her own relatives to men from mining companies, Socorro, a young woman who became a fighter, realized that what was happening to the forest was also what was happening to her:

Raped like her, pierced like her, womb violated with iron to extract the gold within her. Socorro saw herself mixed with the forest, flesh of the same flesh. And she understood herself as forest. Not metaphorically forest, not a figure of speech. Not a symbol. But literally forest. She then became Socorro of Burajuba, the name of her quilombo.

(Brum 2021, p. 55)

As Brum (2021) attests, the Amazon region is a battleground between forces of destruction and forces of resistance. Among the forces of resistance—formed by Indigenous peoples and traditional forest communities such as quilombolas and riverside dwellers—women’s presence has been prominent.

In the ecclesial sphere, on the other hand, the presence of active women is not exactly a new phenomenon. It is undoubtedly linked to ecclesial movements inspired by the development of a spirituality of liberation in Latin America. Liberation Theology emerged after a process of ecclesial conversion. Motivated by the reception of the Second Vatican Council in Latin America, which emphasized the preferential option for the poor, pastoral workers moved to the peripheries. In their encounter with the world—represented by the reverse of Modernity with the face of progress displayed by the developed countries in the middle of the 20th century—these agents discovered, alongside the poor, the need to be a Church against oppression and committed to liberation. It was a new way of being Church: organizing in Basic Ecclesial Communities. Latin American theologians recognized in this entire process the eruption of a Kairos, that is, a time of God, and set out to drink from their own well, in the condition of a new spiritual journey as Gustavo Gutiérrez (1984) explained.

Liberation spirituality represented a newness for Gutiérrez whose starting point and fundamental axis was the vision of the “propitious moment” (Gutiérrez 1984, p. 31). Latin America is experiencing a kairos: “people […] have taken to the path of building a world in which persons are more important than things and in which all can live with dignity” (Gutiérrez 1984, p. 40). In the struggle to affirm the right to life, pastoral workers who went to peripheral communities perceived the poor as agents of a new way of following Christ. In faith communities, they overcame resignation and nurtured a deep trust in the liberation that comes from God.

Nourished by this living water, theologians began to support these communities with a new theology that served their commitment to liberation. At the end of the 20th century, the Jesuit theologian João Batista Libânio (1992) systematically collected the transformations in fundamental theology brought about by Modernity, and presented the Latin American theological response, which had to confront its perverse side that, in Latin America, poverty affects all sectors: health, food, housing, transportation, work, leisure and education. The study of revelation in the Latin American context raises two fundamental questions: “What and how are the situations of oppression and liberating movements a revelation of God? And how can we understand God’s revelations in the light of this experience?” (Libânio 1992, p. 433).

It is within this context that we locate the mission of Sister Dorothy Stang, a nun from the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a woman who participated in this process and can be considered a symbol of female engagement in the Amazon region. Born in Ohio in 1931, she arrived in Brazil in 1966 to work as a missionary among poor communities in Maranhão. This is where she helped build schools, care for the health of the poor and establish Basic Ecclesial Communities.

Dorothy Stang encountered Liberation Theology in its early days. In Maranhão, a Brazilian state controlled by a few landowning families and the political class, the missionaries were considered communists—because they spoke of human rights, land title struggles and education for the poor. In the 1970s, they undertook a more radical mission in the Diocese of Marabá, in the state of Pará, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Dorothy’s passion for the poor and for the forest placed her in direct confrontation with land grabbers, loggers, and large landowners.

In 1982, she moved to Altamira, in the Xingu River region, a city that Eliane Brum (2021) pejoratively considers the vanguard of the world, a site in ruins where one can clearly observe the marks of a planet undergoing destruction.

Through her careful missionary and pastoral work, building small ecclesial base communities, Sister Dorothy managed to bring people together; they began to know each other, read the Bible, pray together, and help one another in solidarity and community.

(Rocha and Ulrich 2019, p. 37).

Because of her activism, Dorothy Stang ended up on a hit list targeted by a corrupt and corrupting system. She knew they wanted to kill her, yet remained committed to the poor forest-peoples. Indeed, Sister Dorothy was assassinated in an ambush in 2005—for defending agrarian reform settlers from agro-ecological projects and thereby threatening the interests of land grabbers in the region. As Bishop Erwin Kräutler of Xingu affirmed: “Dorothy supported the Sustainable Development Projects (PDS) for families of small farmers, enabling them to live in harmony with the Amazon’s flora and fauna through the rational use of natural resources, without destroying it.” (Kräutler 2012, p. 7). Affected by the suffering of the poor and enlightened by her commitment to the Gospel, Dorothy Stang’s life was exemplary in reclaiming the care required for an integral conversion needed to face the contemporary planetary crisis.

Despite the memory and legacy of Dorothy Stang, and although there is significant female presence in the Church of the Amazon region, synodal consultations revealed that this presence is still undervalued, as women remain excluded from decision-making structures (Martins Filho 2020). In light of this, the Final Document of the Amazon Synod acknowledges the current moment of recognizing women’s contributions in the Church and society and also taking into consideration the roles women play in Indigenous contexts, expressing the desire of the Church in the Amazon region to value women’s contributions:

We value the role of women, recognizing their fundamental role in the formation and continuity of cultures, in spirituality, in communities and families. Their leadership must be more fully assumed in the heart of the Church, recognized and promoted by strengthening their participation in the pastoral councils of parishes and dioceses, and also in positions of governance.

(Amazon Synod 2019, n. 101).

It also recommends encouraging “the formation of women in biblical theology, systematic theology and canon law, valuing their presence in organizations and leadership within the Church environment and beyond.” (Amazon Synod 2019, n. 102). It calls for women to be able to receive the ministries of lector and acolyte, for the instituted ministry of “women as leaders of communities” based on the synodal consultations, the possibility of a permanent diaconate for women was requested. The document recalls that Pope Francis created a Study Commission on the Diaconate of Women in 2016 (Amazon Synod 2019, n. 103).

In the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia, Francis calls for the recognition of the importance of women’s roles in the Church and the promotion of other forms of service and charisms for women suited to the specific needs of Amazonian communities (Pope Francis 2020, pp. 101–2). He affirms that in a synodal Church, women, while preserving their unique style, must have access to ecclesial functions and services that have real and effective impact on the organization, the most important decisions and the direction of communities (Pope Francis 2020, p. 103).

7. Conclusions

The shift from the modern paradigm (and its consequences) to another one—which takes into account care for our Common Home, through a conversion of all humanity on the planet—must urgently involve the collective control of human desire, as the Earth is now demanding restitution for the abuses committed against it over the decades, especially in the post-Industrial Revolution.

A new spirituality (of liberation) necessarily entails the proposal of a new mode of production. Human beings must reconnect with cosmic reality. The example of the original people of the Amazon region makes this explicit. The life and legacy of Sister Dorothy Stang reveal that secular powers must be confronted by the integral spirituality of liberation.

This spiritual renewal, as proposed by Leonardo Boff (1996) and present in the more ecological writings of Pope Francis—influenced by Boff himself—is born from the rediscovery of the spirit: the return of God to the world and of divine grace as a positive possibility for humanity to preserve life. Since the entire Earth is under threat, ecology, in a transdisciplinary way, has become a field of knowledge that offers a vigorous critique of society. This is the clearest point of contact between Liberation Theology and what we can call ecotheology: the latter, therefore, represents an expanded theoretical and practical horizon of the former. In other words, while Liberation Theology responded to the cry of the poor and defended them, ecotheology responds to the cry of the Earth—as a being exploited and condemned to death—and seeks its defense (Boff 1996).

Just as Liberation Theology broke with paternalistic and assistentialist approaches to poverty by promoting awareness and the opportunities to take on roles as subjects of history, overcoming exploitation and domination, ecotheology proposes overcoming isolated attitudes of preserving endangered species, preaching universal awareness of the reality of the planet and the new possibilities that open up for the future. It is no coincidence that the convening of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region was an initiative deeply attuned to the climate crisis, which is among the most urgent issues of our era.

In the option for the poor, the practice demanded that we took the place of the poor; in the process of integral conversion of the planet, it demands that we all assume our proper role as inhabitants of planet Earth—responsible for it in the present and responsible for its preservation and holistic development for generations to come. In both models, liberation must be integral.

According to the current paradigm—one that is, not coincidentally, in crisis—human beings are valued for what they have (or appear to have), not for who they are; the Earth, in turn, is valued for what it can offer and not for what it is, in other words, a giver of life. We must recognize that human beings are not only creatures of desire but also beings of solidarity and communion. In fact, Boff (1996) proposes that all good ethics are those that lead to mysticism and are led by it. Ethics must always be in favor of life. The future of new generations depends on the choices made in the present. Each decision depends on the previous choice made in favor of ethics that prioritizes life. Since the establishment of capitalism as the hegemonic mode of production in modern societies, each generation inherits from the previous one a world in increasingly worse ecological conditions, which is a great injustice. Without a spirituality of liberation, it will be impossible to inaugurate the paradigm of the planet’s integral conversion.

The emergence of the discourse of integral conversion to a spirituality of liberation does not necessarily imply the abandonment of Liberation Theology, but rather its expansion in meaning and scope. Boff (1996), for example, proposes a change in humanity’s cosmovision, in other words, a spiritual paradigm shift the logic of dominance over things and nature (including humanity) must be overcome—even if it appears absolute, as proclaimed by the so-called prophets of the end of utopias.

Such a paradigmatic shift also represents the methodological issue that it is not possible to interpret contemporary Latin America—within a complex world—through reductionism or a single form of knowledge. If the gods seek entry (and indeed enter) into Latin American history, it is in the Amazon regions—Pope Francis’ “Querida Amazonia”—that we can perceive and find a new face of the Church, inspiring the integral conversion on the planet. Furthermore, any structural changes must take into account the place of women and minorities. Nothing could be more didactic—because it is empirical—than Dorothy Stang’s encounter with the Amazon region as an illustration of this argument. May her criminal assassination, a death in defense of the poor and against their suffering, represent a call to care for the integral conversion necessary to face the contemporary planetary crisis. May it bear witness to an integral resurrection.