In ‘Querida Amazonia,’ Does ‘Mission’ of Aparecida Live Again?

National Catholic Register, 21 February 2020

Despite Pope Francis’ revival of the great vision the Latin American bishops set forth in 2007, there is little evidence that it will be truly be put into practice.

Does Aparecida live again?

Now that the Amazon synod process has been completed with the publication of Querida Amazonia, the apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis, what is the status of the Aparecida vision most dear to him?

At the Latin American bishops’ plenary meeting in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007, the bishops committed themselves to a great vision of a continent filled with missionary disciples. The final document was drafted under the leadership of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, and the vision of Aparecida — outward-looking, bold and missionary — is part of the reason that he was elected pope.

During the synod last October, I wrote the following:

“Aparecida is in danger. The ‘great continental mission’ called for by the Latin American bishops in 2007 may die in Rome this month. … The synod must kill one of two documents. They propose competing visions of the Church’s presence in South America, and one must prevail. The other will die.

“What document will the synod kill? The much-maligned synod working document, which downplays evangelization in favor of ecology and a certain romantic primitivism? Or will they kill Aparecida, in the presence of the very pope who was its principal drafter 12 years ago?”

To continue the medical analogy, does Aparecida now live? It was dealt a mortal blow by the synod’s working document. The synod itself neither killed Aparecida definitively, nor did it restore its health. Rather, it left it in intensive care, awaiting a decision by the next of kin, Pope Francis, about whether more aggressive treatment should be attempted, or whether it should be left to die.

In reading Querida Amazonia, one first thinks that it is time to call the undertakers for Aparecida. The ecological section contains language and concepts from the working document that are dangerously close to a kind of pagan environmentalism that is far from Christian stewardship of the environment.

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