Cardinal Pedro Barreto Jimeno, S.J., explained that the now officially recognized body “involves bishops, priests, women and men religious and the lay faithful from the nine countries of the Amazon region.”

The pope will create 20 new cardinals on Aug. 27. Sixteen of them are eligible to vote in a papal conclave, and 11 are from or based in countries outside Europe and North America.

As the diocesan phase of the synod ended on Aug. 15, America touched base with some well-informed sources for insight into how the synod has gone so far in the Amazon region and Asia.

Pope Francis has held up the Congolese liturgy as a model for similarly inculturated rites in other parts of the Catholic world.

With the much-anticipated release of Pope Francis’s new encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” on Oct. 4, Catholic Christians would do well to revisit his critique of false realism and false nostalgia, and his call for the church to foster a political attitude of faithful and daring dreaming.

Vatican officials said the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon aims to be “an effective channel for taking up, from within the territory, many of the proposals that emerged” at the Pan-Amazonian synod.