Focolare Movement

Amazon Synod

Jun 14, 2018

On 8 June, the Holy See presented the Preparatory Document of the Bishops’ Synod for the Pan-Amazon region, already announced in October 2017 and to take place in Rome in October 2019. The text, available on www.vatican.va in Italian, French, English, Spanish and Portuguese is divided into three parts: See (“Identity and cry of the […]

On 8 June, the Holy See presented the Preparatory Document of the Bishops’ Synod for the Pan-Amazon region, already announced in October 2017 and to take place in Rome in October 2019. The text, available on www.vatican.va in Italian, French, English, Spanish and Portuguese is divided into three parts: See (“Identity and cry of the Pan-Amazon), Discern (“Towards a pastoral and ecological conversion”) and Act (“New paths for the Amazon Church”). “The reflections of the Special Synod,” affirms the Document in the preface, “surpass the strictly Amazon ecclesiastic field, extending towards the universal church and also the future of the entire planet. Starting off from a specific territory, it casts a bridge towards the world’s other essential biomes: the basin of Congo, the Mesoamerican biological corridor, the tropical forests of Asia Pacific, and the Guaraní aquifer, among others. Listening to the indigenous peoples and all the communities living in the Amazons as the first interlocutors of this Synod is of utmost importance also for the universal Church.”

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to Newsletter

Thought of the day

Related post

A precious legacy: Chiara Lubich’s ‘Paradise ’49’

A precious legacy: Chiara Lubich’s ‘Paradise ’49’

The first presentation of Chiara Lubich’s book ‘Paradise ’49’ took place on the 22nd of May 2026 in the Paul VI Hall at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. The book is a collection of writings in which the Foundress of the Focolare Movement bears witness to and shares her mystical experience from the years 1949 to 1951.

Chiara Lubich: “Do you know where we are?”

Chiara Lubich: “Do you know where we are?”

It is the 16th of July 1949. Chiara Lubich is in Tonadico, in the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy, for a period of rest together with some of her first companions. They are joined there by the Honourable Igino Giordani, whom Chiara called Foco. On that day, Chiara and Foco sealed a Pact of unity, a prelude to the spiritual and mystical experience that Chiara would live between 1949 and 1951. This period is known as “Paradise ’49”, the writings from which have recently been published in a book (for now in Italian). In the introduction to the book, the theologian Piero Coda offers some insights “For a theological reading” of the text. Here is an extract, relating specifically to the Pact of the 16th of July, together with a short video of Chiara Lubich from 20 December 1999, in which she shares this experience of light with the Gen, the young people of the Focolare Movement.