Coché is now the coordinator of the unprecedented network that from the church in Argentina is uniting the parishes, the ethnic groups of the natives and the environmental organizations of Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Uruguay. “The Gran Chaco-Guaraní Aquifer Network (REGCAG) has its origin in Laudato Sí (Praised Seas, the socio-environmental encyclical of the Pontiff) and in the Synod of the Amazon (the great assembly of almost a month in the Vatican)”remarked the bishop, who evangelizes in small chapels in the countryside, where after masses the communities share roast on the stake and after dinner he excels his ability with the Creole guitar and singing.
For Bishop Macín, the model to imitate, while respecting differences, is the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM), which was the first experience of the Catholic Church in alliance with the natives and environmentalists of the great lung and source of water that is the Amazon. , as big as the entire European continent.
“Coché” said that the Gran Chaco-Guaraní Aquifer Territorial Ecclesial Network has its first virtual meeting on July 2, 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, the organizing and animating commission, headed by him, has held virtual meetings once a month.
The Vatican by order of Jorge bergoglio is above this unprecedented process of the church from Argentina. For this, he put the Network for the Gran Chacho and Guarani Aquifer under the responsibility of the Department of Integral Human Development, which is directed by Cardinal Michael Czeny and the nun Andrea Smerelliand in addition, protection and accompaniment are reinforced regionally with the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM).
The first thing they started in the Network is to map the region and agree on the work axes: water, the bond and care of the territories, and the relationship of friendship and learning of the original peoples. “The Network is a new emerging ecclesial subject, which transcends the border of countries or ecclesial circumscriptions, without ceasing to have a reference in the bishop, and local churches, but pointing to the joint work that surpasses or is in common with the churches of the region”affirmed the bishop from Reconquista.
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For this religious, it is key in the process of walking together church and territories, called in ecclesial terms “synodality”, which “Do not miss reference to the specific place, those deeper areas, especially having contact with poverty and exclusion, so that the network never loses that embodied meaning, that the word becomes culture”.
The priest said that joining the Gran Chaco and the Guarani Aquifer “It was a very worked debate at the beginning of the talks and conversations since we know they are two interconnected and different realities in this sense”. And he explained: “At first we thought of a single network with two lungs, or other images, to think of unity and diversity at the same time, then little by little we consolidated this idea of considering the Gran Chaco and the Guarani Aquifer as a single biome. . Also, scientific data that we were able to collect, we also held seminars with competent people in this regard. Then we learned that it is said that the Gran Chacho and Guarani Aquifer underground is a large bowl of fresh water, which is more on the surface, more in the area of the Paraná basin, or Esteros del Iberá, or areas of Brazil, and more underground in the Gran Chaco area, but scientifically it is part of a single water source. Then there are other reasons that unify us, such as culture, which is important to take into account and walk together, that in the original peoples different ethnic groups or groups, but they are present in both territories”.
Another of the reasons for the Territorial Ecclesial Network, according to the Campero bishop, which unites South America “is the phenomenon of urbanization, of monocultures that advance on the mountain, the greenest area, and thus we were finding sufficient reasons to consider that the Gran Chaco and the Aquifer are a single biome, the image that can be useful of a single organism with two lungs that breathe the same air of the Holy Spirit that is blowing in a new way in the church and in the world thanks to the commitment of many and thanks to the service of the church of Pope Francis”.
The REGCAG will have a face-to-face founding meeting in a few months and in Paraguay. There will be convened not only Catholic groups but also institutions or organizations of other beliefs or that work to care for the common home.
400 years ago Saint Francis of Assisi, who was never a priest, revealed to the world that a loving commitment to the poorest and nature is concrete and possible. Meanwhile, the last four Pontiffs before Bergoglio (Saint John Paul XXIII, Saint Paul VI, Saint John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) cried out for the care of our common home, but the first Pope to be called Francis and come from Latin America builds in the territory the defense of “Mother Earth” together with the natives and environmentalists confronting the extractivist business model.
Source: Ambito
