The cardinal also asked how to ensure that the region is not merely a territory of evangelization, but also a place “from which God evangelizes and transforms us.”
Czerny made these remarks in a message addressed to the XXV Interinstitutional Meeting of the Amazonian Itinerant Team, held from August 29 to 31 in Brazil to mark the 25th anniversary of this initiative.
The network, initially promoted by Catholic Church institutions and the Society of Jesus, carries out its work among communities in the Amazon region.
The message was one of Czerny’s final interventions as prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, a post he left on September 1. The Canadian Jesuit was also one of the two special secretaries of the Synod for the Amazon held in Rome in 2019.
“Inculturation is a difficult but necessary path”
Addressing the present state of the Catholic mission in the region, Czerny maintains that the expression “Church with an Amazonian face” must go beyond its institutional dimension.
“The call for a Church with an ‘Amazonian face’ cannot be reduced to an institutional expression. Inculturation is a difficult but necessary path,” he states.
The cardinal then poses a series of questions about the participation of the region’s peoples in the Church’s mission.
“What does it mean today for the Itinerant Team to have a truly Amazonian face? What do we learn from the peoples with whom we walk? What real place do their knowledge, voices, spiritualities, and decisions have?” Czerny asks.
The cardinal adds another question: “How do we allow the Amazon not to be merely the place where we carry out our itinerant mission, but also the place from which God evangelizes and transforms us?”
These considerations are in continuity with some of the proposals made during the 2019 Synod for the Amazon, in which Czerny participated as a special secretary. Its final document called for progress toward a Church that is “inserted and inculturated,” with an “Amazonian face and heart,” and maintained that in the process of inculturation the peoples themselves must be the protagonists.
An “examination of conscience” after 25 years
The XXV Interinstitutional Meeting served to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Amazonian Itinerant Team, but Czerny asked that the anniversary also serve to review the work carried out.
“A true Christian anniversary must also be an examination of conscience,” he states.
The cardinal organizes his reflection around three questions: “What have we done for Christ? What are we doing for Christ? What will we do for Christ?”
Looking back over the past two and a half decades, Czerny asks participants where they have been a close presence, where they have accompanied “threatened life,” and to what extent they have learned from the region’s communities.
“Where have we learned from the peoples of the Amazon, allowing them to be true interlocutors and protagonists? Where have we woven communion among different charisms and been a force for integration?” he asks.
The cardinal also recalls the four dimensions of conversion proposed during the Amazon Synod: pastoral, cultural, ecological, and synodal.
For Czerny, these expressions “are not words to decorate our mission,” but rather “concrete paths of conversion that demand an honest review of our lives.”
Czerny places Leo XIV in continuity with Francis in the Amazon
The cardinal also addresses the situation of the Amazon under the pontificate of Leo XIV. It is Czerny who presents the current Pontiff’s actions as being in continuity with the path of listening initiated during Francis’s pontificate.
According to the cardinal, Leo XIV, “in continuity with Pope Francis,” is helping to discern the Church’s new steps in the region “with his own rhythm and tone” and through concrete calls to unity, peace, care for creation, and the protection of life.
Czerny raises four questions in this regard: “What has matured? What needs conversion? What must begin? What must cease?”
The cardinal recalls the message Leo XIV addressed in March of this year to the VI Assembly of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA). On that occasion, the Pope used the image of the shihuahuaco, a slow-growing tree that over the years becomes an ecosystem and refuge for numerous forms of life.
Czerny takes up that image to present the Church’s call to be a “sign of unity in diversity and a safe refuge that generates and protects life.”
He also recalls Leo XIV’s request to proclaim the kerygma, accompany those who suffer, safeguard creation, and respect “life in all its forms, especially human life.”
“The Amazon remains wounded”
Czerny also refers to the current conditions of the region and states that “the Amazon remains wounded, even more than ever.”
According to the cardinal, its inhabitants continue to face “threats, abuses, exploitation, and new forms of violence.”
“Our common home continues to be attacked,” he notes.
The cardinal maintains that the work of the Itinerant Team should not be limited to bringing something to the communities, but also involves “listening, learning, accompanying, and allowing oneself to be transformed.”
Looking ahead, Czerny does not propose concrete measures in the message and asks participants to discern what initiatives, alliances, and ways of carrying out the mission will be necessary.
“What must die so that something new can be born?” he asks.
The cardinal concludes by wishing that the meeting be “celebration and conversion; memory and discernment; gratitude and examination of conscience.”
Czerny, born in Brno, in what was then Czechoslovakia, in 1946 and who emigrated with his family to Canada as a child, entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained a priest in 1973. Francis appointed him undersecretary of the Section for Migrants and Refugees in 2016, special secretary of the Synod for the Amazon in 2019, and created him a cardinal that same year. Since 2022 he has headed the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.