Cardinal Cláudio Hummes Archives

Amazon governors, meeting after synod, support ‘green economy’

Oct 29, 2019

Governors from eight Amazonian states in Brazil and Peru meeting at the Vatican agreed that the Amazon is threatened and called for a “green economy” that would allow people to generate income without destroying the forest.

By Barbara Fraser

Amazon bishops pledge poverty, spurning plastics and taking the bus

Oct 20, 2019

Facing what signatories call an “avalanche of consumerism,” 40 bishops pledged Sunday to assume a “happily sober lifestyle, simple and in solidarity with those who have little or nothing; to reduce the production of garbage and the use of plastics, favoring the production and commercialization of agro-ecological products; and using public transport whenever possible.”

By Inés San Martín

In synod debate over married priests, is the Rhine flowing into the Amazon?

Oct 18, 2019

One might say that just as the Rhine flowed into the Tiber at Vatican II, in the words of the title to Ralph Wiltgen’s controversial history, so today the Rhine is also flowing into the Amazon.

By John L. Allen Jr.

Could the Amazon synod be Cardinal Marc Ouellet’s last hurrah?

Oct 10, 2019

Though he probably wouldn’t have chosen it as his battleground, in effect the debate over married priests at the 2019 Amazon synod could be Ouellet’s last hurrah, his final opportunity in a meaningful setting to make the case for tradition in a time of runaway change.

By John L. Allen Jr.

Chair of pope’s Amazon summit puts married priests, women squarely on the table

Oct 7, 2019

Not wasting any time, the chairman of Pope Francis’s Synod of Bishops on the Amazon kicked things off Monday morning by putting the hotly contested issues of married priests and the role of woman squarely on the assembly’s table.

By John L. Allen Jr.

Pope opens synod urging bishops ‘not to kick the Holy Spirit out of the hall’

Oct 7, 2019

Pope Francis rued what he called a tendency to see some cultures as “second-class civilizations,” which, he said, “distances us from the reality of a people and separates us from them, which is disrespect.”

By John L. Allen Jr.