The Amazon Synod, Querida Amazonia and Women Phyllis Zagano ‘A Church of Amazonian features requires the stable presence of mature and lay leaders endowed with authority’ (Pope Francis, Querida Amazonia, 2020) Introduction Commentary before, during, and immediately following the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region, 6–27 October 2019, generally focused on two requests: the restoration (at least in that region) of married priests and women deacons. Each seems necessary to the project of evangelisation there, home to 2.8 million people, whose 400 tribes speak some 240 languages belonging to 49 linguistic families. Their eight countries and one territory – Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Surinam, Venezuela and the territory of French Guiana – serve as the world’s lungs. The Synod was supposed to be about these peoples and the lands of the Amazon region, their evangelisation and protection, not about married priests and women deacons. But commentary did not focus on the exploitation of the environment or the peoples of the Amazon, nor did it connect the need for an acceptance of Gospel principles to save the region. This paper examines the development of synodal thought in light of the Church’s perceived attitude toward women as missioners, ministers, and participants in the larger enterprise of Church, and notes signs of hope for women in Catholicism, both in the Amazon region and worldwide. Instrumentum Laboris: ‘Amazonia: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology’ The Synod’s Instrumentum Laboris, or working document, released on 17 June 2019, included a strong call for ‘Ministry with an Amazonian Face’. Developed following a listening process begun during Pope Francis’s January Studies • volume 109 • number 435 316 2018 Peru visit, and fine-tuned with consultations and at two meetings of the Pre-Synodal Council, the working document suggested that ‘new paths for pastoral care’ would re-launch the Church of the Amazon (para. 14).1 The working document outlined the region and its resources, noting that 30%–50% of the world’s flora and fauna, 20% of the world’s fresh water, and one-third of its primary forests, exist within some 7.5 million square kilometres of the nine countries connected by the waters of the Amazon Basin. The Instrumentum Laboris called for dual conversions, pastoral and ecological, aimed at recognising that all life is interconnected, and proposed an evangelisation that respected the cultures of the Amazonian peoples with what it terms an integral ecology. To address these concerns, the document suggested that the wisdoms of the region’s inhabitants be listened to as a way to understand and address the human and ecological injustices visited upon them. The Instrumentum Laboris sought ‘new paths for a church with an Amazonian face’, and stated: ‘it is necessary to identify the type of official ministry that can be conferred on women, taking into account the central role which women play today in the Amazonian Church’. The theme was exact: indigenous and local-born persons would best present the Gospel in the region. Only an inculturated pastoral ministry, one that assumed local cultures and values, would be able to address the plight of the Amazon biostructure and the challenges modernity has levied on it and its peoples (para. 14).2 The Synod: the Special Synodal Assembly on the Pan-Amazon In September 2019, Pope Francis named some 185 voting members to the Special Synodal Assembly on the Pan-Amazon and nearly 100 non-voting experts and observers. They met in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall between 6–27 October 2019. 3 No woman was a voting member of the Synod, a fact that garnered significant media attention. Soon, the Synod became subject to attack by media antithetical to Pope Francis’s concerns for the environment, as expounded in his Encyclical Letter Laudato Sí’ (2015), to his interest in the place of women in the Church and in the world, and especially to his perceived interest in examining the twin proposals for married priests and women deacons. That Synod participants might request restoration of earlier Church practices horrified these media, Studies • volume 109 • number 435 317 The Amazon Synod, Querida Amazonia and Women The Amazon Synod, Querida Amazonia and...