Creating an Amazonian-rite liturgy and new ministries for laypeople, including the ordination of women deacons, are some of the recurring proposals made by small groups at the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon.

Both the church and the nation will steadily shrink without newcomers from beyond our national borders. But there are big differences in how immigration plays out in different parts of the U.S.

“The synod is already a success by the very fact that it is happening,” said the Peruvian Jesuit, one of the president delegates of the Synod for the Amazon.

As the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon reaches its halfway point, leaders of indigenous communities are speaking with passion about what is at stake for their communities and their hopes for this synod.

Pope Francis said, “We must come to realize that what we are accumulating and wasting is the bread of the poor.”

Anitalia Pijachi, an indigenous woman from the Amazonian town of Leticia, Colombia, came to the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon bringing a message from the elders of her people to Pope Francis, an elder of the Catholic Church.

The racism that is now a part of public life must be named and opposed, Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Tex., said in a new pastoral letter.

A panel of religious leaders at Georgetown University advised Oct. 2 that Christians should look to the Gospel for how to respond toward others in a national political environment pushing division.

The Catholic Church in Kenya is promoting a variety of energy-saving stoves with a view to stopping forest destruction and climate change.

With thousands of people killed and almost 1 million of the country's 4.6 million people displaced in the past six years, trauma is rampant throughout the former French colony.