Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Manaus (Agenzia Fides) - Communities of faithful, parishes, mission territories of the Archdiocese of Manaus took part in the pilgrimage of the Martyrs of the Amazon region, which took place last Sunday within the framework of the Fifth National Missionary Congress, which ends today in the capital of the state of Amazonas (see Fides, 10/11/2023).
Throughout the pilgrimage, the names of many well-known and lesser-known people who lost their lives in this country were remembered. On Sunday afternoon, the participants set out in Manaus to pray a rosary, remembering the faces of those who, out of fidelity to the Gospel, sacrificed their lives for the people of the rainforest, for the care of the common home, until the end.
"Experiencing this pilgrimage was a very interesting experience of living faith. The martyrs and the people, priests, religious and many Indians who were killed are considered present, as our faith teaches us," says Sister Roberta Tremarelli, Secretary General of the Pontifical Society of Missionary Childhood who attended the Congress, told Fides. "It was a pilgrimage that was also marked by concern for what is still happening in the Amazon region today, but at the same time by respect for these people who were remembered and by the joy of true faith because we "understood the meaning of the resurrection and the eternal life that Christ gives us". In his homily, celebrated in the same place where Saint John Paul II celebrated Holy Mass on the occasion of his visit to Manaus, the Chairman of the Commission for Mission and Inter-Church Cooperation of the Brazilian Episcopal Conference, Bishop Maurício Jardim, recalled the words of Pope Francis in the message for World Mission Day 2018, which places the mission ad gentes at the periphery of the world, without excluding the territorial, geographical concept. He emphasized: "With this Congress we dream of revitalizing the mission ad gentes of the particular Churches to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit encourages us to go out and advance the process of a genuine missionary conversion". As a fruitful sign of the election journey in the footsteps of the martyrs of the Amazon region, at the end of the celebration the Brazilian missionary Father Josemar Silva was sent from the Archdiocese of Florianópolis to the Archdiocese of Nampula in Mozambique. (EG) (Agenzia Fides, 15/11/2023)
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