Angelus News | October 25, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 36

Other protagonists at the Vatican’s
daily briefings have included luminaries
from outside the Catholic Church,
such as the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
Victoria Lucia Tauli-Corpuz, (and
a non-Catholic, whose father is an
Anglican priest), and Brazilian scientist
Carlos Afonso Nobre, who won the
2007 Nobel Prize for his work on the
IPCC report on climate change.
In all, there are just about 170 bishops
among the full body of roughly 260
synod participants, suggesting this is
less a Synod “of” Bishops than a meeting
“with” bishops.
For a second surprise, despite early
attempts to project strong consensus,
it’s become clear there is actually disagreement
on at least one point: the ordination
of married men to solve priest
shortages in isolated rural communities
in the Amazon.
The synod began with its relator, or
chairman, Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio
Hummes, putting the married priests
debate squarely on the table, saying the
request came from many indigenous
communities during the consultation
phase.
At an early news briefing, Brazilian
Bishop Erwin Kräutler said “twothirds”
of the prelates in the hall are
favorable to ordaining the so-called
“viri probati,” meaning tested married
men.
Yet as things have unfolded, some
discordant notes have been struck.
At an Oct. 16 briefing, for instance,
Bishop Wellington Tadeu de Queiroz
Vieira of Cristalândia in Brazil said
that, in his opinion, the problem with
attracting new priests in the Amazon
isn’t the celibacy requirement but
scandals and poor behavior by some
priests, so the antidote isn’t marriage
but deeper holiness.
Queiroz also claimed to not be alone
in feeling that way: “I think there are
many who share my views,” he said.
It remains to be seen how the synod
will handle the issue in its concluding
document, but there seemed to be
a growing sense at the halfway point
that “specific problems,” such as the
married priests debate, shouldn’t mar a
broad consensus on other matters.
It’s noteworthy that despite being a
synod about the Amazon, many of the
loudest voices in and around it aren’t
native to the Amazon.
For example, there have been complaints
from women’s activist groups
about the fact that no women have
the right to vote in the synod, with
the public faces of those complaints
coming mostly from Europe and North
America.
A news conference at Rome’s Foreign
Press Club just before the synod,
staged by a group called Voices of
Faith, featured a strong turnout of nuns
from a convent in Switzerland, but no
actual Amazonians.
Meanwhile, several counterevents
organized by more conservative and
traditionalist groups have featured wellknown
pundits from Italy, the United
States, and other first-world settings,
but few figures from the Amazon itself.
Even inside the synod, it’s often
striking how many of the bishops and
other figures playing lead roles are
foreign missionaries, descendants of
foreign-born ancestors with roots in
Europe, or who’ve had their formation
and studies in Europe.
Bishop Carlo Verzeletti of Castanhal,
Brazil, who’s spoken in favor of married
priests, was actually born in Trenzano,
Italy, in 1950, and was ordained
in Brescia before going to the Amazon
as a Donum Fidei priest in 1982.
Kräutler himself was born in Austria
and headed to Brazil as a missionary
in 1965, the year the Second Vatican
Council ended.
Bishop Eugenio Coter of Pando,
Brazil, who’s spoken in favor of deeper
inculturation and giving an “Amazonian”
face to the liturgy, was born
in 1957 in Brescia in Italy, the home
region of St. Pope John XXIII.
In other words, the Synod on the
Amazon is another case in which the
local and the universal are colliding,
with results yet to be determined.
No matter how the synod ends,
it won’t be the final word. A synod
is merely an advisory exercise, so
everything depends on what Pope
Francis decides to do with what he
hears, and given this maverick pope’s
reputation for upsetting the apple cart,
that may be a prescription for more,
and bigger, surprises still to come.
John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux.
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October 25, 2019 • ANGELUS • 23
October 25, 2019 • ANGELUS • 23