amazons indigenous people never so threatened pope
Saturday 28 June 2025
Last Updated : GMT 09:40:38
Themuslimchronicle, themuslimchronicle

Amazon And Its Peoples During A Visit

Amazon's indigenous people 'never so threatened': pope

Themuslimchronicle, themuslimchronicle

Themuslimchronicle, themuslimchronicleAmazon's indigenous people 'never so threatened': pope

Pope Francis
Puerto Maldonado - Muslimcheonicle
Pope Francis sounded a stark warning about the future of the Amazon and its peoples during a visit to the region on Friday, saying they had "never been so threatened."

In a speech to thousands of tribe members on the edge of the rainforest in Peru, he said the Amazon and its peoples bore "deep wounds."

Francis lamented "the pressure being exerted by great business interests that want to lay hands on its petroleum, gas, lumber, gold" and industrial scale farming.

He later highlighted the "endless violence" endured by the region's women.

Bare-chested tribesmen, their bodies painted and their heads crowned with colorful feathers, danced and sang for the pope when he arrived in the Peruvian city of Puerto Maldonado.

Thousands of indigenous people had traveled to meet the pontiff from throughout the Amazon basin region of Peru, Brazil and Bolivia.

"We ask you to defend us," said Yesica Patiachi, a representative of the Harakbut people -- one of 23 indigenous peoples specifically mentioned in the pope's greeting at the start of the meeting. "If they take away our land, we can disappear."

- 'Our land was beautiful' -

"I'm 67, I remember that our land was beautiful, with abundant plants and fish," said Luzmila Bermejo of the Awajun people. "The oil, forestry and mining groups came... all of this polluted and weakened us."

Members of one of the tribes presented the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics with a bow and arrow in a symbolic gesture aimed at urging him to help defend their land rights.

"The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present," said the pope, who appeared visibly moved by the reception.

"Amazonia is being disputed on various fronts," he said.

"The problems strangle her peoples and provoke the migration of the young due to the lack of local alternatives.

"We have to break with the historical paradigm that views Amazonia as an inexhaustible source of supplies for other countries without concern for its inhabitants."

The Amazon region will be the focal point of a world bishops' meeting, or synod, to take place in October 2019.

Local tribal leaders and conservationists are increasingly concerned about rampant illegal gold mining and logging that have devastated ancestral lands.

The pope later received a raucous welcome when he visited a shelter for vulnerable children and adolescents, victims of physical, sexual or psychological abuse.

"The world needs you, young men and women of the first peoples, and it needs you as you are," he told them.

Francis encouraged them to study, so as not to be "content to be the last car on the train of society, letting yourselves be pulled along and eventually disconnected. We need you to be the engine, always pressing forward."

Returning to Lima in the afternoon, the Argentine pontiff hit out against corruption in a speech to dignitaries at government headquarters, where his audience included President Pedro Pablo Kuczynsky.

"How much evil is done to our Latin American people and the democracies of this continent by this social 'virus', a phenomenon that infects everything, with the greatest harm being done to the poor and mother earth," said Francis.

On Saturday he is scheduled to visit the northern city of Trujillo, where floods killed more than 130 people, and speak about climate change.

He will fly back to Rome on Sunday after mass at an air base.

- Protests in Chile -

The pontiff, 81, arrived Thursday afternoon in Peru, the second and last leg of a week-long South American visit.

During the first part of his visit, in Chile, Francis highlighted the plight of vulnerable immigrants, offered an apology to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, prayed with survivors of Augusto Pinochet's brutal dictatorship, and called for protection of Chile's persecuted indigenous communities.

Before his visit to Chile, the US-based NGO Bishop Accountability said that almost 80 members of the Roman Catholic clergy had been accused of sexually abusing children in Chile since 2000.

At the pope's first public mass in Santiago on Tuesday, he faced protests over the church's handling of decades of sexual abuse.

Scuffles broke out between riot police and demonstrators near O'Higgins Park, and police used water cannons on protesters. More than 50 people were arrested, authorities said.

At the end of his visit, he robustly defended a Chilean bishop, Juan Barros, who is accused of covering up the sexual abuse of minors by another priest.

themuslimchronicle
themuslimchronicle

Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

amazons indigenous people never so threatened pope amazons indigenous people never so threatened pope

 



Themuslimchronicle, themuslimchronicle

GMT 03:31 2014 Saturday ,26 July

BMW, Aston Martin to recall defective vehicles

GMT 13:30 2017 Monday ,05 June

A handbag? For $380k, it’s yours

GMT 07:08 2017 Sunday ,17 September

Dubai awards contract for final phase of solar park

GMT 06:31 2017 Thursday ,31 August

UAE Ambassador meets Nigerian Minister of Interior

GMT 10:14 2017 Wednesday ,18 October

2 Emirati pilots were killed in Yemen due to crash

GMT 06:08 2018 Wednesday ,24 January

Iranian woman skydiver looks

GMT 08:47 2018 Monday ,22 January

Real Madrid defy crisis talk

GMT 13:40 2017 Thursday ,02 February

US defence chief Mattis visiting South Korea and Japan

GMT 22:28 2011 Thursday ,10 February

The intermingling of the domestic and the foreign

GMT 08:18 2018 Tuesday ,16 January

Volkswagen reports record global car sales

GMT 22:14 2017 Thursday ,30 March

Gold Prices Stable in Tuesday

GMT 18:12 2012 Thursday ,19 April

Monkey

GMT 11:18 2017 Friday ,29 December

Hot Shot proves size no issue

GMT 21:54 2017 Saturday ,15 April

Bahraini-Indian relations reviewed

GMT 22:20 2011 Monday ,28 February

Kelly Brook\'s a fallen angel for new ad campaign

GMT 14:48 2017 Tuesday ,21 November

E-media anti-terror role underlined

GMT 08:03 2017 Thursday ,12 October

Real keeper Navas suffers groin injury

GMT 08:25 2017 Friday ,29 September

Russian group spent $274,000 on Twitter ads
Themuslimchronicle, themuslimchronicle
Themuslimchronicle, themuslimchronicle
 
 Themuslimchronicle Facebook,themuslimchronicle facebook  Themuslimchronicle Twitter,themuslimchronicle twitter Themuslimchronicle Rss,themuslimchronicle rss  Themuslimchronicle Youtube,themuslimchronicle youtube  Themuslimchronicle Youtube,themuslimchronicle youtube

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2025 ©

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2025 ©

muslimchronicle muslimchronicle muslimchronicle muslimchronicle
themuslimchronicle themuslimchronicle themuslimchronicle
themuslimchronicle
بناية النخيل - رأس النبع _ خلف السفارة الفرنسية _بيروت - لبنان
themuslimchronicle, themuslimchronicle, themuslimchronicle