AMERICA/PERU - Bishop Martínez de Aguirre: Witnesses to Jesus' predilection for the peoples of the Amazon

by Gianni Valente

Puerto Maldonado (Agenzia Fides) – The emotion of Jesus as he hears the stories of his disciples, whom he himself had sent out “two by two” to proclaim his salvation. The concern for the young people in the Amazon, threatened by those who exploit them.
The adventure of the Dominicans who came to America under the influence of the “ideology of the Conquistadores” and returned to Europe to proclaim the Gospel of the “wounds of Christ” they had encountered among the indigenous peoples of these lands. And a touch of irony toward the missionaries who come from abroad and, perhaps with good intentions, become enthralled by symbols and signs that are “more or less exotic, but have nothing to do with the real lives of our peoples.”

The stories and insights that Bishop David Martínez de Aguirre Guinea shared with Fides are full of apostolic passion, following his "Ad Limina Apostolorum" visit and his meeting with the other Peruvian bishops and the successor of Peter, are filled with apostolic fervor.

The Spaniard, a member of the Dominican Order and originally from the Basque Country, documents in each of his answers how and why the missionary experiences currently being undertaken in the Amazon region are crucial for the entire Church and for the whole world.

The Pope has called upon the Peruvian bishops to live “in the manner of the Apostles.” How is this reference to the apostles reflected in the lives of the bishops in the Amazon region?

DAVID MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE GUINEA: The most fruitful and striking connection between the experience of the first Apostles and our experience as bishops of the Amazon region lies in the fact that these men were touched by their encounter with Jesus, who won them over, surprised them, and shaped their entire lives. Jesus helped them gain a new perspective on the world, on people, on the multitudes spoken of in the Gospels, and to try to offer a response to the pain and emptiness, and to fill hearts with the joy of God. I often think back to the texts in which the Apostles begin to share Jesus' mission: He sent them out, and they returned to him enthusiastically, and full of joy. And Jesus—as I imagine him—raised his voice to heaven with tears in his eyes and filled with emotion, and gave thanks “for these Apostles you have given me.” It is the apostolic fervor that we missionaries—not only the bishops, but also the missionaries—experience in daily life, in our rainforest, amidst the difficulties: We are nourished by this wonderful experience of Christ by living among these peoples, sharing with them the joy of the Gospel, listening to their suffering, as the Apostles did with so many sick, possessed, and oppressed by evil, who found hope in Christ. This is also our desire: to look at the situations of suffering, pain, and evil that exist in our Amazon region and to try to illuminate and heal them with the joy and peace of Jesus.

Are appeals to the mission sufficient to awaken missionary fervor?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: The Apostles had to risk everything in all this joy. They had their own ideas, and we too, as missionaries, came to the Amazon region with our own ideas, thoughts, and prejudices, which Jesus must correct, just as he did with the Apostles Peter, James, and John. We, too, are undergoing a personal process of conversion, which we must experience with Jesus and together with the peoples we serve. Ultimately, it is Jesus who leads us to witness and martyrdom, which consists of bearing witness by giving our whole lives, our whole being.

During your ad limina visits, you met Leo XIV on several occasions

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: The Pope met with all the bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Peru and then separately with the Bishops of the Peruvian Amazon. We also had the privilege of being present at the unveiling of a mosaic of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary and a marble statue of Saint Rose of Lima in the Vatican Gardens. In these days, the Pope truly was for us the Vicar of Christ, uniting us and making us even more brothers. He said that we should live according to the example of the Apostles and look to Saint Toribio de Mogrovejo, the patron saint of Peruvian bishops. The first thing required of us is unity and communion with one another. Throughout the year, we bishops see each other only rarely and fleetingly, without time to ask how one another is doing. Thanks to the Pope, some very beautiful moments of fraternity were born. He repeatedly told us that we must faithfully proclaim the Gospel. We must not proclaim ourselves, but the living and risen Christ. He urged us to be courageous and even to have a sense of martyrdom. And he asked us to be close to the people, to our priests, religious, and nuns—to everyone.

And what about the meeting with the bishops from the Amazon?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: In our conversation with the Pope, we told him about our difficulties and how we need to improve. He listened attentively and encouraged us to continue proclaiming the Gospel among our peoples and to find ways to promote Church ministries and thus meet the need for priests and pastoral workers in the Amazon, also with the help of our sister churches.

Pope Francis visited Puerto Maldonado. Has the memory of this visit endured?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: This visit had an enormous impact and touched the hearts of all of us who experienced it. Bishops from other regions of the Amazon said, “Puerto Maldonado is the balcony of Pope Francis’ prophecy.” He placed the Amazon at the heart of the Church and delivered a clear message to the indigenous people: the message that the Church has always been with them, continues to be with them, and that they are in the heart of the Pope and in the heart of all the Apostles and Disciples of Christ.

Have there been any concrete results after this intense moment?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: Yes, and they are wonderful fruits. The Pope’s visit made visible the work of many missionaries who are engaged every day in many parts of the Amazon, a dedication that was previously unrecognized and of which there has sometimes been a desire to portray a different image. At a time when religious orders are suffering from a lack of vocations, they tend to leave the peripheries in order to maintain their works and institutions. Pope Francis turned his attention to the Amazon and ensured that many congregations now think twice before ending their presence there, while others are even expressing a desire to establish a house and a presence among the peoples of the Amazon.

But what has changed for you on the ground?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: A synodal dynamic has developed among all the churches of the Amazon. In Peru, this dynamic was already evident in the 1970s: missionaries and pastoral workers from the Amazon met once a year in Lima. But then this dynamic diminished somewhat. With Pope Francis' visit to Puerto Maldonado and the Synod of the Amazon, everything was revived, and today it continues with the work of the Conference of Churches in the Amazon, which in Peru is also reflected in the meetings of the Vicariates convened every January in Lima.

Have you also invited Leo XIV?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: Of course, we invited Pope Leo. Given his desire to come to Peru, we hope that one day he will be able to tell us that he is indeed coming. We asked him to consider the Peruvian Amazon as a place for a powerful message, a place where people would want to welcome him and embrace him in his Petrine ministry.

Will the work surrounding the “Amazonian Rite” continue?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: The Amazonian Rite is a response to the Synod of the Amazon. It emerged from the universal Church listening to the Church in the Amazon region, within the framework of a process that linked the pre-synodal phase, the Synod, and finally the Apostolic Exhortation “Querida Amazonia.” This work can yield a systematic answer that can be implemented both in the liturgy and in the norms governing church life: an Amazonian rite, which must be examined and adopted by a church institution, namely the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon.

Are these topics reserved for liturgists and academics?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: The path to an Amazonian rite is not just about rituals or the choice of specific signs and symbols to be used in the liturgical action. The Church is alive; it continues to search for ways to express faith in Jesus, and impulses in this search can come from the smallest communities and from missionaries. We are in a process of self-discovery, of encountering the profound sensibilities of our peoples. While sometimes we pursue constructions that may seem impressive, but ultimately prove to be forced. Thus, perhaps out of a desire for the peoples of the Amazon to find their own way of expressing their faith, the missionary from outside may introduce elements that may seem more or less exotic, but have nothing to do with the real lives of our peoples.

An example of this?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: This was also the case during the Amazon Synod with the well-known image that was said to be the "Pachamama." We were very surprised by the interpretation of this fact, which led to many misinterpretations. It all started with a man who had seen a wooden image in Manaus that seemed to him an excellent symbol for the fertility of the earth and the life of our Amazonian peoples. He considered it a kind of totem of an Amazonian people. But it wasn't. For one thing, the "Pachamama" doesn't belong to the Amazonian peoples, but to the Andean peoples. Furthermore, there is no iconographic representation of the "Pachamama." So one has to be careful. Because sometimes representations are created from the outside that are far removed from the lives of the peoples, from their liturgical life, and also from their worldview.

What are the next steps on the path to an Amazonian rite?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: We are currently analyzing how our peoples celebrate, how they experience illness and purification, and how they live out their relationship with transcendence and with one another. In time, forms and symbols will emerge to express what is shared with the entire universal Church. In communion with the entire Church. We all share the same thing and adapt to express, with our own signs and forms, what the Church's liturgy conveys to us: the mystery of the living Christ, the risen Christ. In January, at the Assembly of the Peruvian Amazonian Church, a proposal was also made to establish a "School of Missiology."

What is the purpose of such a "school" in the Amazon?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: The Church in the Amazon is primarily engaged in missionary work. She is not only concerned with strengthening the faith of those who are already believers, but also constantly strives to proclaim the Good News that Christ is the hope for all peoples, and to offer a proposal—humbly and simply, as Christ did, but also resolutely and convincingly—based on her own life's witness.

In this sense, it is important that the missionaries and pastoral workers who have come to the Amazon region possess the necessary skills to express the message of Christ as clearly as possible, so that it is also understandable to those who receive their message. This is a first step toward what is commonly referred to as inculturation. The actual inculturation is then carried out by the Amazonian people themselves: they are responsible for and the protagonists of this process.

However, it is true that upon arrival, the missionary must know at least some basics in order to avoid making mistakes: a sign or expression that has a certain meaning in one culture may have a completely opposite meaning in another. Then it must be left to the people to appropriate these codes: they will be the ones who express the message of the Gospel in their own cultural customs and reinterpret their own culture in the light of the Gospel of Christ.

So it is not just about “instruction manuals” for those who come from afar…

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: What we are looking for is a school of missiology that provides both outsiders and local communities with the means to discover how baptism and following Christ directly move us to share and spread the Gospel. When Christ proclaims the Gospel to us, it is not an intimate experience for a single person. “It is good that we are here. Let’s build three shelters,” Peter says to Jesus when they are on the mountain after the Transfiguration. But Jesus immediately brings us back to the plains, in this case the Amazon plains, to proclaim the Good News: Christ for all peoples.

At the Ecclesial Assembly of the Peruvian Amazon, you also expressed particular concern for the situation of your young people. What are their weaknesses? And what dangers threaten them?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: Yes, young people in the Amazon are under threat. Children, teenagers, and young adults are suffering in every way because, as Pope Francis said, the Amazon has probably never been as threatened as it is today. The Amazon, as a mining region, attracts many who strive for gold and quick wealth. A wealth that places money at the center, like a god. And then everything else collapses: the family collapses, Jesus Christ collapses, the community collapses, the nation collapses, the sense of community collapses. Everything collapses, and a kind of "every man for himself" emerges, the so-called law of the jungle—not the true law of the Amazon—where no one cares about others and people trample on them to achieve their goals. This way of life leads to self-destruction. And those who suffer most from this brutal individualism and this relentless pursuit of easy money are children, teenagers, and young adults. They endure all forms of violence, including abandonment. Families often break apart, and many young people and children are left alone, feeling abandoned.
And they know that a future filled with illegality and abuse awaits them.

What are you referring to?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: When we talk about human trafficking, we often only think of sexual exploitation—which is real and terrible—but that's not the only form: there's also trafficking where teenagers and young adults are recruited for extortion or illegal activities. Illegal mining, cultivation, or transportation of prohibited substances. Almost always, it's young people who are recruited as killers, their vulnerability being exploited. They are the first victims of a system. Therefore, we are concerned and want to focus especially on children, teenagers, and young adults to compensate for the lack of affection and family support and to help them find human connections with one another and with Jesus Christ. May He restore their dignity and give them the strength to become what they are called to be: the beautiful vocation of being fully human, as God intended for each of us.

You belong to the Dominican Order. What does it mean today to be part of this great story that has accompanied the Church's mission in Latin America from the very beginning?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: Indeed, as a Dominican myself, I am deeply moved by the tradition of those Dominicans who, although they had their own theology, left Europe and certainly shared, in some ways, the ideas of the Conquerors. They belonged to this context, came to America with these ideas and this doctrine, and then came into contact with peoples who were transformed by them. These first Dominican friars underwent a personal conversion process and, by viewing reality through the eyes of Christ, as the apostles did, learned to perceive the cry and pain of those peoples who were deeply oppressed by the very ideology of the Conquerors from which these missionaries themselves came. These first Dominican missionaries, such as Pedro de Córdoba and Antón de Montesinos, were the result of this process, and from them emerged the most famous among them: Bartolomé de las Casas. It was from this Dominican reflection that these friars, who had recognized this pain, returned to Europe.
How many journeys did Brother Pedro de Córdoba undertake after the sermon of Antón de Montesinos, in which he said: “Are these peoples not also human beings? Have you brought them to this state? Do you not believe that they are just as far from the faith as those whom you in Europe at that time considered infidels?” These powerful words were brought to Europe by Pedro de Córdoba, and they led to a transformation of theology and ideology, the introduction of new laws, and initial changes. They had gone to evangelize, but they themselves felt newly evangelized and called from there to evangelize Europe.

What is the most important focus of the Dominican mission in Peru today?

MARTINEZ DE AGUIRRE: I think that here in the Amazon and in Peru today, the Order is called to listen to reality, to the suffering of our people, and, in proclaiming the Good News of Christ, also to look to his face, to the face of the suffering Christ that our people show us. And from this listening, we, like our people, hear how this Word of God is returned to us to proclaim to the whole world, continually discovering the proclamation of grace, of the saving God of the God who calls us to live in the dignity of his daughters and sons. It seems to me that this must be the hallmark of the Dominican mission here in Peru: a proclamation that listens to the cry of pain of the peoples, a proclamation that allows itself to be touched by what Christ awakens in the hearts of the peoples to whom we preach, and that becomes a proclamation for all humanity, in order to bring about a conversion to the Gospel and to the life that is Christ. (Agenzia Fides, 5/2/2026)

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