Bishops urged to consider how to broaden church’s reach in the Amazon

The Vatican has subtly suggested it is open to a new debate on whether married men and women can serve in official ministries, after it called on Catholic bishops who are working in the Amazon to think “courageously” about how to broaden the church’s reach in the region.

A document published on Friday ahead of a 2019 special synod does not explicitly raise the issue of married men serving as clergy but says Catholic bishops need to think of new ways to allow the faithful to access the Eucharist, and acknowledges that the church is spread “precariously thin” in the region.

It also calls on bishops to consider the role of women in the Amazon, and what ministerial roles they might play, “taking into account the central role women play today in the Amazonian church”.

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Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri said at a press conference to discuss the document that the church was not making an “official declaration” about the role of married men and women serving in ministries, but he suggested there was room for debate.

“Here we speak of ministry – there are lots of various forms of ministry,” he said. “Let’s leave freedom to the discussion. We are not trying to preclude anything.”

Baldisseri, the general secretary of the synod of bishops, quoted previous remarks by Pope Francis that the church needed to “allow space for women in the church at all levels” while still confining itself to official doctrine, which bars women and married men from serving as priests.

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Some Vatican watchers have interpreted the language of the 14-page document as possibly raising the prospect that the church might allow married men and women to serve in new roles, at least in the Amazon.

The Vatican has called for the meeting in part so that bishops can think of new ways to create a church “with an Amazonian face and a church with a native face”, the document says.



At the same time, it emphasises the “cry of thousands” who have been deprived of the Sunday Eucharist because of the church’s challenges in the region.



The preparatory document also focuses on environmental and cultural issues in the Amazon, as well as the church’s history of colonialism there.