"We told the Holy Father that we are afraid because we are forgetting our language; it is being extinguished because we are asphyxiated by the models of development that come from outside that do not respect life."

What exactly are we celebrating on Columbus Day?

Deacon Pereira will become the first priest from the Tikuna ethnic group, a tribe of about 60,000 people that live deep in the Amazon, along a stretch of the jungle shared by Colombia, Peru and Brazil.

Members of nonprofit Catholic missionary groups have traveled the Eastern Coachella Valley area, seeking to connect with the indigenous Purépecha community.

The church has made a great effort to build a genuinely indigenous Catholic tradition in the Amazon region, reports Eduardo Campos Lima, and indigenous leaders have great hopes for the upcoming synod.

Less than two weeks before the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon was scheduled to begin at the Vatican, the Brazilian bishops' Indigenous Missionary Council reported that the number of indigenous land invasions and indigenous murdered in Brazil in 2018 soared.