Bishop Adolfo Zon Pereira of Alto Solimões, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, became animated as he cited the preamble of the Amazon synod’s working document. His voice rose as he read out the words “The Amazon is a subject and it must be listened to.”
“This is an earthquake!” he told a scrum of reporters. “It is an earthquake in the new geopolitics because the Amazon should be seated as a subject at the table of the big powers.”
The earthquake of which Bishop Zon spoke will be felt far beyond the Amazon region and could shake the Church itself. The Amazon, which covers parts of nine countries and has a basin containing 15 per cent of the world’s freshwater, has long been treated as a hinterland. But at this month’s synod of bishops in Rome it will be the centre of global attention.
