“To live these days as an experience of conversion, collegiality, and synodality” was the wish expressed by Monsignor Lizardo Estrada at the beginning of the Meeting of Bishops of the Amazon, which is being held from August 17 to 20 in Bogotá.
During the opening ceremony, the prelate assured that this meeting is a prophetic sign for the whole Church, an aspect that Pope Paul VI already affirmed in 1972 when he said that “Christ points to the Amazon” and that “it is from the Amazon that the Gospel becomes flesh.”
He affirmed that this reality is lived in Amazonian communities, where there is no lack of “a table of communion, a place to feel sent to continue the work of reconciliation, justice, care, and unity that Christ has entrusted to us.”
The legacy of Nicaea
The Peruvian bishop described his expectations for the Meeting of Bishops of the Amazon, saying that it is an “Easter experience shared among brother pastors who must strengthen themselves in service, faith, and hope.”
He implored the Holy Spirit for this grace, extending his welcome to the more than 100 bishops from the nine countries that make up the Pan-Amazon region.
In his message, the prelate recalled the journey since the Council of Nicaea.
“This year we celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, where the Church, under the guidance of the Spirit, clearly and firmly proclaimed its faith in Jesus Christ, Son of God. Nicaea was more than a doctrinal act: it was a synodal process of discernment, where differences were welcomed and oriented toward unity in truth,” he said.
For Estrada, celebrating Nicaea is “confessing that synodality is in the DNA of the Church. Its structure and functioning are deeply inscribed in the event of Jesus Christ and Pentecost.”
Listening, discernment, and pastoral outreach
Thus, ecclesial unity, lived in communion among bishops, ministers, and faithful, expresses the unity of the Trinity. “This same spirit has animated the journey of our Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean, and this year also marks the 70th anniversary of CELAM,” he said.
An institution that was born to serve episcopal collegiality on our continent, creating a fruitful space for listening, discernment, and pastoral planning, from which CEAMA emerged.
Secondly, the secretary general of CELAM referred to the need to recognize the living magisterium that springs from this process and which, in CEAMA, is a concrete sign of a Church that allows itself to be shaped by the Spirit.
In these reflections, Estrada invited us to live the contemplation of the episcopal mission, recognizing it as a ministry of communion and conversion; “a call to enlighten the Church from the territories, with the Gospel made flesh in history.”
This observation from the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA) goes beyond the consideration of a “new institutional structure in the Church. On the contrary, it is a mature fruit of the lived magisterium and a testimony to incarnate synodality.”
“It is a profound recognition of the path that the Spirit has brought about in the last five years, uniting the experience of the peoples, theological reflection, pastoral choice, and the prophetic voice of the Amazonian bishops, while continuing to place episcopal collegiality at the heart of ecclesial synodality,” he said.
An authentic conversion
In this sense, the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon shows the beauty of a new synodal organism under construction, which calls the whole Church to an authentic conversion, to a synodalization of all ecclesial structures.
“This process requires us bishops, priests, consecrated persons, and laity to leave behind logics of power or fragmentation and to deepen our baptism as a full requirement for the exercise of ministries, in communion and exchange of gifts among the local Churches,” he affirmed.
From this perspective, the auxiliary bishop of Cusco said that “ministry is not only functional, but existential, the fruit of the Spirit and service to the Kingdom.” For this reason, holding this meeting at the CELAM headquarters has symbolic and spiritual value because both institutions “show that being Church today means walking synodally, with the courage to build something new, without abandoning what is essential.”
Profound renewal
Finally, he called for an episcopal mission in the Amazon that is full of conversion, service, and unity, because at this time “the episcopal mission is called to renew itself from within. It is not a matter of guarding structures, but of opening new paths, offering spiritual direction, sustaining communion, and promoting processes of evangelization capable of making the Kingdom of God present in the world.”
The bishop reminded his brothers that they are called to be a living sign of unity in diversity. “Shepherds configured to Christ, servants of the pilgrim people, in the midst of a pilgrim humanity.”
In this sense, the Amazonian Churches are accompanied by their bishops, true beacons of conversion for the whole Church. “Not because they have all the answers, but because they dare to walk with the peoples, listen to the cry of the earth, discern with humility, and proclaim the Gospel from the small, the plural, and the vulnerable,” he said.
Thinking about the Amazon and the role of the bishop, “the goal is to live an episcopal ministry that becomes an ecclesiology of service, discernment, communion, and prophecy.”