カトリック教会、既婚者でも神父に？　南米アマゾンの遠隔地布教で

【バチカン市国ＡＦＰ＝時事】ローマ・カトリック教会のフランシスコ法王（82）は6日に始まった南米アマゾン地域に関する司教会議で、既婚男性でも司祭になれるようにするという物議を醸している案について提起しようとしている。（写真はバチカンでアマゾン地域に関するローマ・カトリック教会の司教会議開会に際し、フランシスコ法王（中央）が行ったミサに参加するアマゾン先住民の代表ら）
　カトリック教会の今回の世界代表司教会議は、アマゾン地域で孤立する貧しい先住民社会を支援するために開催された。ブラジルなどアマゾン周辺諸国９か国の１１３人を含む司教１８４人がバチカンに招集され、３週間にわたって議論が交わされる。
　会議のためにまとめられた８０ページに及ぶ作業文書は、社会的不公正や殺人を含む犯罪などを痛烈な単語を用いて非難し、教会の行動計画を提案している。
　今回の司教会議に先立ち、地元住民の意見を文書に反映させるため、およそ２６０の行事がアマゾン地域で催され、８万人が参加したという。
　フランシスコ法王は、遠隔地にまで広がるアマゾン地域に住む人々へ布教するために、既婚男性でも司祭になれるようにする提案について議論したい意向だ。
　だがこの提案は、アマゾン地域に例外を設けると司祭の独身制の崩壊につながるとして、一部の伝統主義者から強い反発を呼んでいる。ただし、カトリック教会の教義では、司祭は独身でなければいけないとは定められておらず、また独身制の伝統が始まったのは１１世紀のことだ。
　この案については特に、影響力の強い進歩派が存在するドイツのカトリック教会で熱心な議論が交わされている。
　また、この会議では、すでにアマゾン地域の教会で中心的な役割を担っている女性のための公式な役職の設立についても話し合われる予定となっている。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2019/10/08-08:49）

Pope Francis opened a synod Sunday to champion the Amazon's poverty-stricken and isolated indigenous communities by condemning the destructive interests he blamed for the fires that devastated the region.
The fire set by interests that destroy, like the fire that recently devastated Amazonia, is not the fire of the Gospel, he said before the bishops from the nine countries of the pan-Amazonian region and representatives of indigenous peoples.
The fire of God is warmth that attracts and gathers into unity. It is fed by sharing, not by profits.
The fire that destroys, on the other hand, blazes up when people want to promote only their own ideas, form their own group, wipe out differences in the attempt to make everyone and everything uniform.
The global spotlight has recently been on the world's largest rainforest, which is vital for the planet but is suffering from its worst outbreak of fires in years, due in part to an acceleration in deforestation.
The working document for the synod denounced in scathing terms social injustices and crimes, including murders, and suggested a Church action plan.
Listen to the cry of 'Mother Earth', assaulted and seriously wounded by the economic model of predatory and ecocidal development... which kills and plunders, destroys and devastates, expels and discards, the 80-page document said.
The run-up to the three-week synod, or assembly, saw some 260 events held in the Amazon region involving 80,000 people, in a bid to give the local populations a voice in the document.
Among those attending the synod as an observer was Sister Laura Vincuna, a missionary trying to protect the territories of the Caripuna indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon.
Help us defend our motherland, we have no other home! she said on Saturday.
Earth, water, forest: without these three elements nobody can do anything, she said on the eve of the synod.
- 'New forms of colonialism' -
Sunday's gathering comes as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate-change sceptic, told the United Nations that the world's media were lying about the Amazon, and attacked indigenous leaders as tools of foreign governments.
In his 2015 encyclical on ecology and climate change Laudato Si, Francis denounced the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest in the name of enormous international economic interests.
Last year, the world's first Latin American pope visited Puerto Maldonado, a village in southeastern Peru surrounded by the Amazon jungle, to meet thousands of indigenous Peruvians, Brazilians and Bolivians.
That trip was the first step towards the synod which opened Sunday.
So many of our brothers and sisters in Amazonia are bearing heavy crosses and awaiting the liberating consolation of the Gospel, the Church's caress of love, the pope said in his homily. For them, and with them, let us journey together.
He also warned against the greed of new forms of colonialism.
Francis' hopes of bringing the Catholic faith to far-flung populations will also see the bishops gathered in Rome debate a highly controversial proposal -- allowing married men to become priests.
The issue deeply upsets some traditionalists, who argue that making an exception for the Amazon would open the door to the end of celibacy for priests, which is not a Church law and only dates back to the 11th century.
The German Catholic Church in particular, which has an influential progressive wing, has been hotly debating the subject.
The synod, which runs until October 27, will also reflect on making official roles for women, who already play a central part in the Amazonian Church.
Of the 184 prelates at the synod, 113 hail from the Amazonian region, including 57 from Brazil.
Others taking part include 17 representatives of Amazonian indigenous peoples and ethnic groups, and 35 women -- who will not have the right to vote on the final document.