Injustice Recedes When Christ is Preached: Pope Leo XIV
Pope Leo XIV has addressed a message, through his Secretary of State, to the bishops of the Amazon gathered in Bogotá, Colombia, under the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA). From August 17–20, 2025, some 90 bishops convened to reflect on the pastoral needs of the region, continuing the structures and initiatives launched after the Amazon Synod of 2019.
Proclaiming Christ as the First Duty
The Holy Father insisted that the proclamation of Christ is the indispensable foundation of all pastoral work in the Amazon. He declared: “It is necessary that Jesus Christ, in whom all things are recapitulated, be announced with clarity and immense charity among the inhabitants of the Amazon, so that we may strive to give them fresh and pure the bread of the Good News and the heavenly food of the Eucharist, the only means to truly be the People of God and the Body of Christ.”
In this statement, the Pope restated the perennial doctrine that the Church exists primarily to make Christ known and to administer the sacraments. Echoing St. Paul’s teaching, he affirmed that “wherever the name of Christ is preached, injustice recedes proportionally, for, as the Apostle Paul asserts, all exploitation of man by man disappears if we are able to receive one another as brothers and sisters.”
This clear insistence on the primacy of preaching and the Eucharist stands as a needed correction to the temptation, present since the Amazon Synod, to reduce the Church’s mission to merely social or ecological concerns. The Pope here ties true justice to the spread of the Gospel, not to political or secular programs.
Justice and the Shortage of Priests
The Amazon continues to face severe challenges in the availability of priests to administer the sacraments to remote communities. While some voices in 2019 sought to exploit this reality to argue for the ordination of viri probati or other irregular proposals, Pope Leo did not endorse such measures. Instead, he called for renewed missionary zeal, linking justice for indigenous peoples to their right to receive the faith “fresh and pure,” rather than diluted by inculturation that risks syncretism.
Care for Creation in Right Order
Turning to creation, the Pope urged the faithful to exercise both the “right and duty” of stewardship, warning against two dangers: exploitation of natural resources without regard for the Creator, and the idolatry of nature, whereby man becomes enslaved to the environment rather than using it rightly as a means to glorify God.
Quoting the spirit of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Pope insisted that creation has been entrusted to man so that, through it, we may “attain our end of praising God and thus obtaining the salvation of our souls.” In this, Pope Leo carefully distinguished Catholic teaching on stewardship from pantheistic or naturalist ideologies that have sometimes crept into contemporary ecological discourse.
Continuity and Caution
While Pope Leo’s emphasis on Christ and the Eucharist offers hope for a reorientation of Amazonian pastoral initiatives back toward supernatural ends, the framework of CEAMA — a body created in the wake of the Amazon Synod — remains problematic. Traditional Catholics continue to express concern that such structures may perpetuate the synod’s ambiguities and the push for inculturation at the expense of doctrine.
Nevertheless, the Pope’s words that “injustice recedes when Christ is preached” remind us that no authentic renewal of society or creation can be achieved apart from the Kingship of Christ. The Amazon, like every region, requires not accommodation to the spirit of the age, but fidelity to the Great Commission: “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mk 16:15).
- Pius XI, Quas Primas (1925), §12 – “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.”
- Eph. 1:10 – “To re-establish all things in Christ.”
- 1 Pet. 2:9 – “That you may declare his virtues, who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”
- Mk 16:15 – “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
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