Amazon bishops did their best to offer the Pope fresh ideas at the 2019 Amazon Synod – just as he asked for, Bishop Erwin Kräutler says.
Pope Francis provokes “an insane hope” he says. Hope of reform. Hope that may remain unfulfilled.
“I am one of those people who – as Pope Francis says – live in the Amazon, suffer with it and love it passionately.”
He and the other Amazon bishops worked together at the Synod to make sure the situation for the Church in the Amazon is clear and to offer solutions to its immense problems.
The 85-year old Kräutler says at the synod many Amazon bishops expressly called for proven men and women from remote church communities to be ordained as priests.
They voted on the issue of ordaining lay men and women who met the proposed criteria and the outcome showed 80 percent had voted in favour of viri probati (people of proven faith) and the diaconate for women.
“And Pope Francis did not accept it.”
Kräutler says the Pope’s response was frustrating and disappointing as he “had previously told us bishops: Make bold proposals to me”.
Amazon bishops ignored
Kräutler says it is inconceivable that Francis did not mention the Amazon bishops’ proposal at all in his final document of the synod.
He feels pessimistic about the universal Church’s synodal process. He says “Nothing will come of it – nothing was achieved but expenses”.
He does not believe this October’s universal church synod will discuss “pressing reform issues” at all.
Reform inevitable
Yet Kräutler predicts that Church reform in the Amazon region is inevitable.
He says as a young “itinerant bishop” in remote areas he was often asked his wife’s whereabouts. Celibacy isn’t a concept that fits into the Amazonian reality. His response that he was unmarried resulted in strange looks.
Eventually he escaped the strange looks by lying. He told enquirers that “my wife is far, far away”.
The villagers regretted this loneliness “but at least there were no more strange reactions”.
Married priests are among the reforms he sees coming.
“Married priests will come first, then the diaconate for women. Women priests will be the next stage.”
In Kräutler’s view, the reasons Francis won’t ordain women – to protect them from clericalism – is “a joke”.
He says “the unordained men in the Amazon region are much more clerical than the women who lead parishes”.
Furthermore he knows “no woman who lives clericalism – not one. We need women – also in ministries.
“It cannot be that ancient men design a theology of women.”
Next steps
Kräutler hopes the next pope will bring back a “springtime for the Church” – similar to the one he experienced as a young man at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).
Francis has set the reform process in motion and the Church could not go back on the approaches he initiated, Kräutler says.
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