The EconomistOctober 26th 2019 International 552 boldened by Brazil’s far-right president,
Jair Bolsonaro. His government has
shrugged off deforestation, vowed to legal-
ise mining on indigenous lands, and hol-
lowed out the environment ministry and
the indigenous agency, funai. The murder
in September of a contractor from funai
who worked in that territory, Vale do Java-
ri—and the subsequent exodus of other
workers after they were threatened—left
the tribes feeling even more vulnerable.
Despite the church’s chequered history
in the region (it is credited with educating
millions of poor children but blamed for its
complicity with colonialism and the eco-
nomic exploitation that followed), many
indigenous people see the institution as
their most promising ally. “In the past, the
church made us lose our culture, but
there’s a new spirit in the head of the pope,”
says Absalon, a middle-aged curaca(chief )
from a Uitoto village near Nazareth.
The Indigenist Missionary Council
(cimi), a human-rights organisation estab-
lished by the Catholic church in Brazil in
1972 and run mostly by lay-workers, helps
indigenous tribes secure land rights and
put pressure on governments to uphold
them. In a vast region where the state’s
presence is limited, cimialso tells the au-
thorities about abuses against indigenous
people. “The church is often the bridge be-
tween the tribes and the government,” says
Felício Pontes, a public prosecutor who
worked for two decades in the Amazon. “It
saves us time and money.”
But the Catholic church is not an ngo; it
wants to save souls as well as trees. Its ef-
forts to do so raise an issue that resonates
far beyond Latin America and the Catholic
church. “The indigenous representatives
[in the synod] are saying: ‘If you don’t re-
cognise some part of indigenous spiritual-
ity, you will lose us’,” says Josianne Gauth-
ier, a guest at the synod and the
secretary-general of cidse, an internation-
al alliance of Catholic charities.
How far, though, can a religion based on
dogma go in respecting other belief sys-
tems before it irreparably compromises its
own? The dilemma posed by incultura-
tion—the adaptation of a religion to alien
cultures—has been central to the synod’s
deliberations. It parallels the secular de-
bate in countries that have experienced
mass immigration over the relative merits
of multiculturalism and assimilation.
Christians have been borrowing from
other religions since the days when the pa-
gan feast of Saturnalia transmogrified into
Christmas and the Gaelic festival of Sam-
hain became All Saints’ Day. In the sermons
he delivers in Nazareth, Father Valério
adapts a few of the details. The figs become
local acai berries and Mary and Joseph tra-
vel, not by donkey, but in a canoe.
Few Catholics dispute the need for com-
promise if their faith is to prevail in a part
of the world where it is increasingly being
challenged by other brands of Christianity,
particularly the evangelical kind. But many
would be shocked to hear Adolfo Zon Pe-
reira, the bishop of the Alto Solimões re-
gion of the Brazilian Amazon, say: “We
don’t talk about conversion any more.” Dia-
logue with locals, he argues, should be “in-
tercultural and inter-religious” in order to
protect “our shared house”.
To the retired pastor of Marajó, another
Amazonian diocese, this verges on sacri-
lege. Bishop José Luís Azcona Hermoso be-
lieves that the synod has been irretrievably
corrupted by an “obsession to understand
the Amazon from the [perspective of ] in-
digenous people”, who make up only a
small fraction of its residents.
On October 4th, two days before the
synod opened, Pope Francis and other Vati-
can dignitaries attended a ceremony in the
Vatican gardens that gave substance to the
worst fears of those who believe that the
pope’s tolerant liberalism risks carrying
him to the brink of heresy, or even beyond.
“A group of people, including Amazonians
in ritual dress, as well as people in lay
clothes and a Franciscan brother, knelt and
bowed in a circle around images of two
pregnant women who appeared to be semi-
clothed,” according to the Catholic News
Agency. A woman later presented one of
the statues, apparently representing the
Andean fertility goddess, Pachamama, to
Pope Francis, who blessed it.
The event, with its suggestion of pagan
worship, set off a social-media firestorm of
indignation. A “blasphemous abomina-
tion” is how one conservative website de-
scribed it. On October 21st a video was
uploaded to YouTube showing the removal
of wooden figures similar to those used in
the Vatican ceremony from a Rome church.
They were then cast into the Tiber.Exasperation with the reforming pope
has been gathering momentum among a
minority of traditional Catholics. Even
some of his cardinals believe he is distort-
ing the church’s teaching. Talk of a schism
within the church is growing. Last month
Pope Francis said he was not afraid of such
a rift, but prayed that it would not happen.
The discussion at the synod of whether
to recommend in the Amazon region the
ordination of women as deacons or that of
married men as priests will do little to heal
such divisions. Both questions have arisen
as a result of local issues, in particular, a
scarcity of manpower. Most missionaries
in the Amazon are lay-workers or women.
Father Valério makes it to Nazareth, less
than an hour up the Amazon from where he
lives, only every couple of months. Some
isolated places see a priest just once a year.Where do they go from here?
The pope is not bound to respect the syn-
od’s advice. But a strong consensus against
either measure would make it harder for
him to steamroll them through. As a first
step towards drawing up the synod’s final
report, 12 working groups were formed. Six
have endorsed the ordination of viri probati
(a church phrase meaning “men of proven
virtue”), who in many cases would be tribal
elders, and four that of women as deacons.
But the others either appealed for further
debate or made no mention of the issue.
Approving either measure would prove
divisive. The ordination of women as dea-
cons would enable them to carry out a wide
range of ecclesiastical activities, from de-
livering sermons to officiating at some
baptisms and funerals. Supporters argue
that women played a prominent role in the
early church. Conservatives remain ener-
getically resistant to the idea.
Traditionalists fear that ordaining mar-
ried men as priests in the Amazon could
gradually lead to wider, if not complete, ac-
ceptance of the practice. On October 18th
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, a senior
church bureaucrat, disclosed that his
working group had recommended the cre-
ation of a new, Amazonian rite. Such a
move should ensure that the practice of or-
daining married priests was “quarantined”
within the region, making sure that it
could not easily be spread to the rest of the
church. But opponents still fret that this
could be the thin end of the wedge.
Such debates echo only faintly in the
Amazon basin, where the concerns of most
missionaries are largely practical. Father
Valério spends far more time on boats
criss-crossing the region to check up on the
well-being of residents—only some of
whom are Catholic—than he does baptis-
ing babies or giving communion. His work
will continue whatever Rome decides. But
the current in the synod appears to be flow-
Lead, kindly light ing in the direction of change. 7