During the concluding moment of the Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies, held on Saturday, October 25, in the Paul VI Hall, the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA) shared its testimony as a living fruit of the synodal process in the Amazon region.
The event, organized by the General Secretariat of the Synod, brought together representatives of synodal teams and ecclesial bodies from around the world to exchange experiences and best practices in the implementation of synodality.
CEAMA is like a river that continues to flow
In his speech, Mauricio López, vice president of CEAMA, described the Amazonian journey as a process in motion, “like a river that is born, grows, and always seeks new forms of life.”
“CEAMA is the fruit of a long journey of the Church, of a missionary Church involved in the lives of people. It is an ecclesial conference in full communion with the universal Church, which integrates all ministerial expressions: episcopate, religious life, priesthood, laity, and indigenous peoples,” he said.
López recalled that CEAMA is a structure unprecedented in ecclesial history, emerging from the Synod for the Amazon (2019), which responded to one of the clearest requests of the synodal process: to create new spaces for participation where no service of the Church feels diminished, but rather empowered.
“It is a sign of communion where bishops, religious women—especially those who support the mission in the Amazon—lay people, and indigenous peoples walk together, discerning and deciding with equal dignity and mission,” he emphasized.
An Amazonian Church that embodies Pope Francis’ four dreams
During his participation, López explained that CEAMA expresses the four dreams of Pope Francis’ exhortation Querida Amazonía:
• a social dream, to defend the life and dignity of peoples;
• an ecological dream, to care for our Common Home;
• a cultural dream, to value the diversity and catholicity of the Church;
• and an ecclesial dream, which promotes new faces for a hopeful Church incarnate in the territories.
“The Holy Spirit has made possible a newness that does not come from human structures, but from the very life of the peoples. We are all God’s people, in communion also with our sister Mother Earth,” he said.
A synodality that is born from the territory
The vice president of CEAMA recalled that this path is not only institutional, but deeply spiritual and communal. The CEAMA assembly is made up of representatives from the seven Amazonian episcopal conferences and includes a bishop, a priest, a religious, a lay person, and an indigenous, peasant, or Afro-descendant leader from each country, with expanded representation in Brazil due to its territorial size.
“What we are experiencing in the Amazon is a novelty of the Spirit: a synodal Church that walks in otherness, in reciprocity, in dialogue with the earth and the peoples. A Church that proclaims hope, weaves the Kingdom, and lives the kairos of God,” López concluded.
An experience that inspires the whole Church
CEAMA’s testimony was received with enthusiasm by the participants of the Jubilee as a concrete experience of territorial, ecological, and community synodality that reflects the universality of the Church in its diversity.
With its presence at the Jubilee, CEAMA reaffirmed its commitment to continue sharing the Amazonian experience as a source of renewal for the whole Church, a Church that listens to the cry of the earth and the peoples, and dreams of new paths of communion and hope.