The most controversial blocks for exploration are located offshore at the mouth of the Amazon River basin. Petrobras, a government-controlled oil company, is pushing to begin preliminary drilling in search of new oil reserves.

Among the main concerns they mentioned were the role of the laity, especially of women; the contribution of the church on ecology in light of the encyclical “Laudato Si’”; and “spiritual conversation,” a method of discernment that was adopted to structure discussions during the first assembly that could become a major legacy of the synod.

Devastated by malnutrition and preventable diseases like flu, pneumonia, anemia, malaria and diarrhea, the Yanomami people have been called victims of a contemporary genocide by government authorities.

After four years of the far-right government of Jair Messias Bolsonaro, Brazilians peacefully welcomed—for the third time—the inauguration of the popular center-left leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on New Year’s Day.

South America’s largest democracy will hold presidential elections on Oct. 2 with two iconic Latin American populists as competing candidates: Mr. Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who served as president from 2003 until 2010.

A renowned Dutch priest, professor and journalist, Titus Brandsma was killed in a Nazi concentration camp. The woman who executed him later became Catholic—and this Sunday, Father Brandsma will be made a saint.

“It is clericalism that prevents the church today from being missionary,” Bishop Cipollini said. “I have great hope that the synod on synodality can make clericalism collapse—perhaps not entirely, but at least in its major strongholds.”

Besides taking up the challenge of exploring new frontiers of evangelization in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Brazilian women religious have also become evangelizers of the “old continent,” Europe, where female vocations have radically declined in recent decades.

“Like Jesus, Judge Livatino died forgiving his murderers,” said Cardinal Marcelo Semeraro during the beatification ceremony of May 9, 2021, at the Cathedral of Agrigento in Sicily.

What began on April 28 as a public reaction to a tax reform proposal from President Iván Duque has expanded into a massive mobilization of broad discontent.