As part of Brotherhood Week, held in the Apostolic Vicariate of Ñuflo de Chávez in the Bolivian Amazon, the vice president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA), Juan Urañavi, shared the mission of the Amazonian Church in the face of the challenge of caring for our Common Home and called for a shift from reflection to action grounded in spirituality and integral ecology.
As part of Brotherhood Week, held in the Apostolic Vicariate of Ñuflo de Chávez in the Bolivian Amazon, a workshop dedicated to the care of our Common Home was held, inspired by Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’. The event brought together representatives from various jurisdictions and provided an opportunity to delve deeper into the ecological challenges facing the Amazon and the Church’s commitment to defending life and creation.
One of the highlights featured Juan Urañavi, vice president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA) representing indigenous peoples, who outlined CEAMA’s role and shared reflections on the need to strengthen the Church’s response to the socio-environmental crisis from the perspective of integral ecology, spirituality, and community action.
During his remarks, Urañavi explained that CEAMA is a Church body called to accompany, strengthen, and encourage local Churches, especially in challenges related to the care of our Common Home.
“It is a Church body that exists to support, strengthen, and encourage local Churches, especially in matters concerning the care of our Common Home.”
An Ecology That Engages All of Humanity
The vice president of CEAMA emphasized that caring for our Common Home cannot be limited exclusively to protecting the environment. From the perspective of integral ecology, as proposed by Pope Francis’s magisterium, it is a responsibility that involves everyone living on the planet and integrates environmental, social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions.
“It doesn’t stop there; integral ecology also states that this responsibility falls on each and every one of us who inhabit our Common Home,” he affirmed.
In this regard, the discussion highlighted the need to move beyond a fragmented view of the ecological crisis and to recognize that the degradation of ecosystems is closely linked to the situations of vulnerability faced by numerous communities, especially in Amazonian territories.
For Urañavi, the Church’s response must be rooted in the reality of peoples and communities, recognizing their knowledge, experiences, and ways of relating to nature.
From Information to Action: An Ecological Conversion
The workshop also highlighted the need to move beyond mere concern sparked by data on the environmental crisis toward transformative action.
In this vein, Ernesto Morales García, executive secretary of the Vicariate’s Caritas Social Ministry, noted that it is not enough to simply accumulate scientific information about environmental crises; rather, it is necessary to translate that knowledge into concrete actions from a perspective of faith.
This reflection allowed for a deeper exploration of one of the central themes of Laudato si’: ecological conversion, understood as a profound change in the way we relate to God, to one another, and to creation.
From this perspective, caring for nature is not merely a technical or environmental task, but also an expression of faith and Christian responsibility.
“Justice from the Heart”
Juan Urañavi’s contribution highlighted a perspective deeply rooted in the experience of the Amazonian indigenous peoples, for whom the relationship with nature cannot be separated from community life, spirituality, and their territory.
The call is to restore a respectful and grateful relationship with creation, recognizing that water, forests, rivers, animals, and all other living beings are part of the same Common Home.
On this journey, the Church is called to promote processes that integrate spirituality, justice, the defense of territories, community participation, and care for creation.
The workshop concluded with an invitation to strengthen these processes within parishes, communities, and ecclesial jurisdictions, making integral ecology a cross-cutting dimension of the pastoral mission.
Brotherhood Week, held in the Bolivian Amazon, thus became a space to renew the Church’s commitment to caring for our Common Home and to continue developing, from the local level, concrete responses to the socio-environmental crisis.
From CEAMA, the call remains clear: caring for our Common Home means defending life, listening to the peoples, and building an integral ecology rooted in faith, justice, and a commitment to present and future generations.