Grandfather Francisco!
Dress up the Dear Amazon in her beauty, dramas and mysteries!
You heard the cry of mother earth and the sons and daughters of the earth.
You descended to the peripheries of humanity and told us that the peripheries, from their smallness, shine like a sun, illuminating the earth.
You amplified the voices of the people of the earth and the Amazonian peoples, ‘never have the Amazonian peoples been so threatened as now’.
On this day of your Passover, you join the chorus of those who followed the Lamb and contemplate the Lord face to face. Now you have become ancestral and another Samaúma tree welcomes your spirit. I hear the sounds of maracas, atabaques, sacred flutes, playing songs of joy and jubilation for your arrival in the Kingdom of Heaven. Our ancestors welcome you with cocar, with jenipapo and urucum, with their paintings and sacred dances.
The heart of the Amazon is enormously grateful for having heard your prophetic voice, for having participated in the changes that make us return to the first source of Being the Church, the people of God who walk and are on their way, faithful to the Master Jesus.
The message that the women of dawn announce today in the Gospel is that Jesus has risen, that he has defeated death. Today we announce your Easter. The Trinity welcomes you in its arms saying: “Come son and participate in the banquet of life.”. Your words have spread like rebellious seeds throughout the earth, which will sprout as a new beginning, calling us to the Galilee of today…
Gratitude is the word that the Amazon has to say to the world today, for its existence in these 12 years of service to the Church, People of God.
Gratitude for taking us out of invisibility and showing the world the pain of our mother Earth, whose womb is torn by the exploitation of its natural resources, which are assets for all humanity, for present and future generations.
Gratitude for believing that the Amazon is a Sacred Territory for the experience of Synodality, of Being the People of God Church, for the trust placed in the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon. We know that we have a long road ahead of us, but we are sure that the Lord, the Risen One, is with us.
Gratitude for his life given to the poorest, the last and the many peripheries. Your simplicity touched our hearts and lit a spark to follow paths as “pilgrims of hope.”
Sister Laura Vicuna
Vice President of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA)