The first ecclesial assembly for Latin America is held in Mexico, from November 21 to 28, 2021, in the episcopate, in Cuautitlán. It is a particularly important meeting, as it rehearses novelties cherished by Francis, such as the perspective of synodality. The meeting is virtually articulated with other venues in Latin America and the Caribbean. The ecclesial assembly has the scope of the episcopal conferences that have been held, without being exact, every 10 years on the continent.
In the first, in Rio de Janeiro (1955), the Catholic consciousness of a certain continentality was built. Latin America as a more modern concept than the reduced notion of Hispanic America. The second conference of the Latin American episcopate was in Medellín, Colombia (1968). This meeting was founding. In a year of great social movements and rebellion on a world scale, the bishops, under the influence of the Second Vatican Council, set pastoral guidelines for the Church in the region. The option for the poor, the fight against injustice and the condemnation of structural sin, exercised by authoritarian regimes that emerged as a plague that haunted democracy. In almost the entire continent great Catholic social movements, of priests, of ecclesial communities and the so-called liberation theology are generated. The Latin American Episcopate Conference, held in Puebla (1979), was a train wreck. A conservative sector of bishops rejected the lines drawn in Medellín. He criticized the abandonment of doctrinal orthodoxy and contagion of Marxism and theories of dependency of the time. The powerful Bishop Alfonso López Trujillo questioned Medellín’s interpretations and was preparing for a restoration with the support of the newly appointed Pope John Paul II. It was not so; there were intense conceptual struggles between the bishops in Puebla. The option for the poor was qualified by the “preferential option for the poor” and cultural factors were introduced to counteract the more politicized readings of some bishops. We are going to Santo Domingo (1992), within the framework of the fifth centenary of the discovery of America and the first evangelization. The Roman curia stole the meeting. His political, intellectual and theological presence marked a lackluster event. The thoughts of two Uruguayans predominated, one of them a convert. They came from the south of the continent. Alberto Methol Ferré and his disciple Guzmán Carriquiri, eternal lay official in the Vatican. Both imposed an idyllic and even simplistic vision of how Catholic identity fundamentally marks Latin American cultures. María de Guadalupe is a paradigmatic model. Mary who becomes an Indian and becomes a popular deity. Maria is the mother and queen of the Mexicans and overlaps the European and Mesoamerican cultures. Both ignored the imposition, violence, genocide and contempt with which the original cultures were treated by the conquerors and, with few exceptions, by the majority of the missionaries. Thus, we come to Aparecida, Brazil (2007). Perhaps the most important thing about that fifth conference of bishops was not the conclusions. Fortunately the slogan was spent: time of change and change of era. There was a strong ecclesial experience among the participants. Among them was Cardinal Mario Bergoglio, future Pope Francis. An experience of silence, listening, prayer, fraternity and ecclesiality that countered with the previous conferences. Aparecida marked Francisco in his initiative to reform the Church towards forms of synodality, which means walking together, used as a model for the first primitive Christian communities. This hypothesis was confirmed by the process of the Synod on the Amazon, concluded in Rome in October 2019. For this reason, Francis has convened a synod on synodality that began a few weeks ago at the level of local communities and will conclude in Rome in 2023.
We can say that the status of the ecclesial assembly is experimental and avant-garde. It has important news. 1) It is an assembly in which lay people and women participate and not a conference that was reduced only to bishops. 2) In times of pandemic, the assembly alternates Zoom technologies and social networks. The instruments allow a holistic and instantaneous communication, previously unimaginable. 3) The assembly in Mexico is the result of a broad process of consultation, local and national.
The low media profile of the act is striking. In Mexico the assembly until now is invisible. Contrast with the conference in Puebla (1979). Of course, that act had the inaugural presence of the charismatic John Paul II, who filled the front pages of Mexican newspapers and television for more than 15 days.
A great question floats: how to face the Catholic decline in the region? The decline in membership and the loss of credibility and moral authority of the Church. Responding to the Advancement of Neo-Pentecostal Churches, Their Prosperity Theology, and the Challenge of Pentecostalizing Politics. How to vindicate the role of women and feminist theology. How to de-clericalize the thinking of religious and the rancid structures of the Church, the result of the ecclesial cold war that John Paul II and Benedict XVI induced. Environment, native groups, rights, migration are unavoidable issues. What are attractive pastoral hypotheses for young people today. Many questions. Will there be answers?
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