Pope Francis' post-synodal exhortation on the Amazon is part of the Church's ordinary magisterium – that is officially a kind of Church teaching – while the final document of the Vatican’s 2019 Amazon synod is not, Cardinal Michael Czerny, special secretary of the Amazon synod has said.
The distinction in the authoritative weight of the two documents was also emphasized by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, and by Matteo Bruni, the director of the Holy See Press Office.
