Pope Francis recently compiled a 94-page exhortation summarizing his experience at the Synod that was held in Rome last October, which included religious and spiritual leaders from around the world, bringing focus to the destruction being done to the Amazon Rainforest.
The exploitation that’s being done by both international and local businesses harming the Amazonian land and its original inhabitants show no respect and are done without prior consent. Pope Francis said these should be called for what they are; “injustice and crime.”
Companies whose only aim is for a quick profit are given free rein by local authorities, end up privatizing the lands, overtaking access to clean water for their oil and mining projects, and give free access to timber companies who decimate the forest and ultimately kick the indigenous people from their lands. Pope Francis goes on to write:
They frequently resort to utterly unethical means such as penalizing protests and even taking the lives of indigenous peoples who oppose projects, intentionally setting forest fires, and suborning politicians and the indigenous people themselves. All this accompanied by grave violations of human rights and new forms of slavery affecting women, in particular, the scourge of drug trafficking used as a way of subjecting the indigenous peoples, or human trafficking that exploits those expelled from their cultural context. We cannot allow globalization to become “a new version of colonialism.
The Amazon region has 110 indigenous tribes that have called it home for generations. Their deep heritage is now in jeopardy due to large corporations and governments pushing people out. The Pope calls out to the young people of the region to stand up and “take charge of your roots, because from the roots comes the strength that will make you grow, flourish and bear fruit”.
He encourages the different indigenous tribes from the entire region to band together. Use their love and passion for the land to come together and inspire others to join in their cause, “from the roots.” Share their ideas and hopes, let this be known to the world that the people of the Amazon need help and action from people around the world to join in. For the Amazon forest is the lungs of Mother Earth, to let this area be pillaged is and should be considered unacceptable by the entire human race, not just by the people who live there.
Here is an excerpt from the exhortation:
The harm done to nature affects those peoples in a very direct and verifiable way, since, in their words, ‘we are water, air, earth and life of the environment created by God. For this reason, we demand an end to the mistreatment and destruction of mother Earth. The land has blood, and it is bleeding; the multinationals have cut the veins of our Mother Earth.
Pope Francis goes on to point out that the powerful are never satisfied with the amount of profits they make. It is for this reason that humanity should insist on urgently establishing laws that stop the few from destroying the Earth for all. The importance of this cannot be overstated. He points out;
if someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple.
Instead, Pope Francis pleads that we care for the land and “enter into communion with the forest” so that the voices of the people become one with the voices of the forest. We need to recognize the Earth is what supports and gives us all life, and we must treat it with love and respect.
The Pope ends by asking people to come together on this because we are united by the struggle for peace and justice. That solutions are found by “overflow”, by transcending our limiting beliefs and visions. Pope Francis said; “in this historical moment, the Amazon region challenges us to transcend limited perspectives and “pragmatic” solutions mired in partial approaches, in order to seek paths of inculturation that are broader and bolder.”
The people of the Amazon need the help of humanity to overcome what is being done to the lands, and they should receive help because it affects all life on Earth.
