Synod for the Amazon: Presentation by Jean François Petit

Toward the end of December, Jean François Petit, Assumptionist and professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris invited the Sisters of Saint Jean de Bassel Convent to a presentation on the final document of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon.

First of all he described the great diversity of the Amazon region: presence of 390 indigenous groups, a hundred ethnicities, 3 million indigenous people. In view of such diversity, the Synod wanted to discern a new way of dialogue and to be an “instrument of listening of the People of God.” In what way?

Petit cited two. First of all the Synod recalled the fundamental human rights, the cultural, ecological, social and pastoral dimensions indispensable to human dignity and in view of the profound and violent transformations of the Amazon: deforestation, mentality of extraction, poverty, the threat on life from violence, trafficking, drugs, ethnocide…

Then the Synod opened a path of “listening to the Amazon, in the spirit of a true disciple and in the light of the Word of God and of Tradition, which leads us to a profound conversion of our plans and structures to Christ and his Gospel.”

This Synod is important not only to the Amazon, insisted Petit. The Synod document is a call to all Christians to reconsider their fundamental options and their way of living. No matter where he or she lives, each Christian can act with others as “yeast in the dough” and actively commit to “care for our common home”,

The care of creation is one of the orientations of the Sisters of Divine Providence. This presentation gave them information and offered them a challenge.