Australian Feminist Studies

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The Pachamama in the Vatican Garden: Integral

Ecology, Climate Change, and Conservatism in the
Pan-Amazon Synod

Lisset Coba & María Moreno

To cite this article: Lisset Coba & María Moreno (2022): The Pachamama in the Vatican Garden:
Integral Ecology, Climate Change, and Conservatism in the Pan-Amazon Synod, Australian
Feminist Studies, DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2022.2062670

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2022.2062670

Published online: 19 Apr 2022.

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AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2022.2062670

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The Pachamama in the Vatican Garden: Integral Ecology,

Climate Change, and Conservatism in the Pan-Amazon Synod
Lisset Coba and María Moreno
Department of Sociology and Gender Studies, FLACSO, Quito, Ecuador

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
In the encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis proposes Integral Ecology Integral ecology; anti-
as the moral basis for defending the biosphere in light of capitalist genderism; Amazonia;
ambition. At the same time, he defines the monogamous and decoloniality; ecofeminism
heterosexual family as foundational to nature and life. These
conceptions are disputed by the faithful of the Church in
Amazonia, a region where religious missions have played a key
role since colonial times. We use the Pan-Amazon Synod (2019)
to explore the debates/rituals around concepts of life within and
around the Church. We follow the concurrences and
contradictions between the Pope, conservative clergy, local
missions, feminist theologists, and women indigenous leaders
demanding political positions from the Church. From an
ecofeminist and decolonial perspective, we propose that Integral
Ecology, taken as a progressive position regarding environmental
issues, ends up being a Trojan Horse that reinforces anti-feminist
and pro-life agendas.

Introduction
Followed by a group of parishioners adorned with feathers and painted faces, singing
liturgical songs that emphasise the importance of natural beings in creation, Pope
Francis leads a procession towards St Peter’s Basilica for the Pan-Amazon Synod’s
opening mass in October 2019. On their shoulders, they carry a canoe containing
various gifts including a figure of a naked pregnant woman with black hair and Amerin-
dian features. The gathering was attended by several different spiritual leaders from Ama-
zonia, a region recognised for its global climate importance.
The Pan-Amazon Synod was a Special Assembly to put into practice the encyclical
Laudato Si’ (2015), a missive issued by Pope Francis, recognised for its ecologist character
that defines the Earth as ‘Our Common Home’. Jorge Bergoglio is the first Latin American
Pope1 and he was elected to the position in the middle of the Church’s great crisis after
the resignation of Benedict XVI provoked by the Vatican Bank corruption scandals and the
numerous cases of paedophilia and sexual abuse committed by priests in various parts of
the world2 (Mallimaci 2013).

CONTACT Lisset Coba lcoba@flacso.edu.ec; María Moreno msmoreno@flacso.edu.ec La Pradera E7-174 y

Almagro, Quito, Ecuador
© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 L. COBA AND M. MORENO

With the task of rekindling the Catholic faith, Bergoglio emulates St Francis of Assisi,
Patron Saint of Nature, and follows the ecological route paved by his predecessors: the
anti-communist John Paul II, promoter of the natural complementarity between men
and woman, and Benedict XVI, staunch critic of sexual diversity and ‘gender ideology’.
From Benedict, he takes on the issue of Integral Ecology and from both, the defence of
Judeo-Christian family values. The figure of the new Pope as pastor of the poor frames
the relationship between the Vatican and Amazonia, a location with a long history of mis-
sionary attempts to evangelise its ‘savage’ peoples since early colonisation.
Centuries later, in the context of a commodity boom, accelerated expansion of extrac-
tive frontiers and the plundering of indigenous territories, the local churches have main-
tained their authority3 in the region, some with great proximity and commitment to the
Amazonian people. Most converts to Catholicism practice their own particular syncret-
ism.4 This syncretic Catholic tradition can at times come into conflict with the church hier-
archy. Indigenous spiritual leaders, priests, nuns and laypeople of diverse ideological
tendencies within the Pan-Amazonian Church Network, REPAM, have urged the Catholic
Church to commit to confronting the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and encour-
aged the Synod to address the effects of climate change in the region (Final Document
2019).
One night, during the Synod, some figures offered to the Pope were thrown into the
Tiber river by unknown subjects. Despite being discarded, the figures of dark, naked and
pregnant women’s bodies outraged the right-wing of the Vatican who criticised the
figures as representing what they saw as the idolatrous presence of the Andean divinity:
the Pachamama. These feminine figures offered to the Pope and then discarded, rep-
resent an arena of conflict that emerged in the Synod between environmental concerns
and understandings of gender hierarchies and the role of women in the Church, and ulti-
mately, a dispute about authority over life. The Pope called for tolerance, the more con-
servative sectors appealed over the failure to comply with dogma, the indigenous leaders
demonstrated spiritual plurality, religious women protested over the absence of female
voices in decision-making, and indigenous women demanded specific commitments
from the Vatican on the destruction of their rainforests.
This article contributes to this special issue by exploring the juxtaposition of ecological
and feminist discourses and practices in a post-colonial context, focusing on debates
about papal authority in an area with centuries of missionary encounters. It also addresses
the political agency of local religious, lay and indigenous people, especially women
climate change activists. Within this context, we ask: How does the Catholic Church
relate its progressive attitudes towards the environment and its struggle in favour of
the poor to its anti-feminist and conservative approaches to sexuality and the patriarchal
family?
The environmental defence of the rainforests as God’s work pretends to be the answer
to the clamour of the poor. This is a religious populism that claims an ecological ethic but
also moralises women’s bodies in order to perpetuate colonialist authority over life.
However, the Church is a field of contestation for local subjects, indigenous and non-indi-
genous men and women, who press for their religious and territorial rights, criticise colo-
niality and extractivism, and challenge the Catholic Church to act on their behalf. We
review different conceptions of life and ecological interdependence to understand
diverse anticolonial claims. Specifically, we argue that the purportedly progressive
 AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST STUDIES 3

Catholic stand toward climate change in liaison with a social justice agenda for the poor
that is expressed in the proposal of Integral Ecology, serves to advance Catholic anti-fem-
inist and pro-life advocacy, as exemplified in the Pan-Amazon Synod. At the same time,
we show that although Catholic indigenous women have seen their aspirations to
being ordained as deaconesses unmet, they nevertheless transgress colonialist and patri-
archal understandings of nature and their bodies: their belief systems open space for
other forest beings as having agency beyond only God the father, and they continue prac-
tices of bodily self-determination in their communities.
This article is organised in the following way: it begins with ‘Connections: Catholic
Church and decolonial ecofeminism’, a review of the literature oriented to propose a
decolonising ecofeminism perspective. We then examine ‘Gender and Francis’ Integral
Ecology’ in the encyclical Laudato Si’. Next, in ‘The cry of the poor in the Vatican’ we intro-
duce the process leading up to the Pan-Amazon Synod and the debates on conserving
ecosystems that surrounded it. Then, in ‘Unfished revisions of religious gender hierar-
chies’, we address the struggles for political equity within the Church. In ‘Consensus
against the gender ideology’, we observe the consensus between the Church and
ultra-right groups on sexual and reproductive rights. Finally, in ‘Indigenous women,
living rainforest and religious self-determination’, we examine the stances of indigenous
women regarding their understanding of their religious and bodily self-determination. In
the conclusion, we discuss some of the ambivalences of the Synod.
These reflections are based on an intertextual reading of documents that examines
events using a process approach, dialogues with the testimonies and ethnographic
accompaniment of women in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

The Environmental Crisis, the Catholic Church and Indigenous Women

John Paul II and Benedict XVI are referred to as ‘The Green Popes’ who theologically inter-
pret the environmental crisis with the aim of motivating Catholics to behave in ways to
not upset the planetary balance (Pavić and Šundalić 2016). Case (2019a) notes that Ben-
edict XVI also viewed humans as an endangered species with regard to their essential
characteristic of being male or female: his antifeminist discourse on ‘gender ideology’
has been put forward in world summits on the environment and development and on
women, declaring sexual and reproductive rights and sexual diversity as unnatural. Ben-
edict XVI’s concern for climate change in the first decade of the twenty-first century was
based on an ecological and instrumental ethic of humans as stewards of God’s creation
(Mizzoni 2014). In that same vein, Francis called out NGOs and international organisations
that promote women’s rights and sexual diversity and accused them of committing a
form of ideological colonisation (Case 2019a). While Pope Francis may express com-
passion to those he deems sinners due to their sexual diversity, he is against same-sex
marriage and considers it a way of destroying the plans of God, and the identity and sur-
vival of the family. His thought is relevant in this analysis as it is twinned with his under-
standings of Catholic teachings on nature and concern for the poor.
Religious identity within the Catholic church is multiple, with more conservative and
more progressive stances (Vaggione 2017). The most conservative promote the
defence of life and point to ‘gender ideology’ as contrary to the complementarity of
men and women, the couple, marriage and the moral order based on reproduction,
4 L. COBA AND M. MORENO

and as stimulating the elimination of the family and violating the rights of the human
embryo. Theologian Clifflord (2017) questions Pope Francis’ Integral Ecology, pointing
out that failing to mention the ways women are affected by ecosystem degradation main-
tains a silence on the relationship between gender and climate change and ignores the
experiences of women.
Feminist theologians (Marovich 2016; Clifflord 2017) assert that while Francis seems to
break with the idea of a nature/culture dualism, he continues to resort to gender binarism,
feminising the Earth, and surrendering to a politically powerful, imperialist, patriarchal
and colonist father. Others observe the oppression of women and the destruction of
the planet as part of the same patriarchal system (Ress 2011, 111). Ecofeminist authors
and feminist theologians highlight the activism carried out by poor and indigenous
women. Ivonne Gebara (1999, 2013), for example, reflects on the colonisation of beliefs
and its relationship with geography, calling for a need for humility to recognise that
there is no absolute power that regulates the meaning of a place. Moreover, she criticises
the Pope’s proposals that uphold the masculine benchmark of the church and keeps
specific women in abstraction, extolling their submission to religious hierarchies.
This is significant as women are particularly vulnerable to ecological problems.
Environmental disasters impact the living conditions of impoverished women who
handle the planet’s food supply. Bee, Rice, and Trauger (2015) underline the importance
of observing how powers interconnect across the planet and the intimate realm of con-
sumption in a neoliberal context that loads even greater responsibilities onto women.
Nevertheless, women have also created extensive networks in defence of land (Dankel-
man 2002). Gaard (2015) notes that the movements of indigenous women together with
those of animal activists are the first to recognise changes in their environments. At the
same time, she criticises intersectional humanisms that do not seek to eliminate the
culture/nature divide and other binaries such as the body/spirit and human/non-
human. Indigenous feminists (Paredes 2010; Cabnal 2012) suggest that body/land-terri-
tory links can be used as a way of breaking with the ontological binary categories of
humanity/nature and a way of fighting against diverse forms of violence from a decolonial
reading that does not separate the body from the spirit.
Indigenous women make claims to self-determination of their territories in the global/
national/local decision-making processes that do not take them into consideration (Ulloa
2016). In the Ecuadorian Amazon, for example, they have challenged the expansion of the
oil industry frontier (Vallejo and García-Torres 2017; Bravo and Vallejo 2020). The capacity
of indigenous women for political alliances is crucial for their positioning against extracti-
vism (Sempértegui 2019, 2020). Feminist theologians had recognised the importance of
the fight of impoverished women against extractivism (LasCanta 2018) as well as the cos-
mological dimension of the struggle of Amazonian women with regard to the ‘living
forest’ (Coba and Bayón 2020).
Ecofeminist theorists agree in defining life as an interconnected web (Mies and
Vandana 1997; Ress 2011; Gebara 2012), a proposal that would seem to share some
ideas with Benedict XVI and Francis’ Integral Ecology which also upholds the interdepen-
dence of ecosystems and the reproduction of life. From a decolonial perspective, we note
that such definitions imply differentiated political perspectives on the governance of colo-
nised populations. Ecofeminists outline an interdependent ecopolitical ethic that con-
siders the inequalities of power in which women in the former colonies work to heal
 AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST STUDIES 5

the environment. In contrast, Catholic morality proposes a vertical and androcentric

ecology that perpetuates a sexist and colonialist guardianship, dependant on God the
Father, and an ecosystem based on gender binarity, as we shall see below.

Gender and Francis’ Integral Ecology

In 2015, Pope Francis sent the world’s bishops the encyclical Laudato Si’ concerning the
environment and development in which he recognises nature as ‘a magnificent book
in which God speaks to us’ (Pope Francis 2015, 11). In the missive, Francis proposes
defending the Earth or Common Home, incorporating ideas used by John Paul II and Ben-
edict XVI, and considers the current ecological crisis in a holistic manner, as part of a web
of other social crises (Briola 2019). He proposes that inalienable human dignity is the limit
of scientific and economic knowledge. In the same vein, he criticises the financialisation of
common goods and the privatisation of water at the detriment of the poor who will be
the ones to suffer most from the effects of climate change.
The encyclical condemns the inefficiency of governments, suggests guidelines and
action areas, defines the climate as a common good, and highlights agreements on
climate governance and social debt payments by large companies who are causing the
ecological and moral catastrophe. The Pope sustains that those who destroy biodiversity
commit a sin against divine creation: ‘to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin
against ourselves and a sin against God’ (Pope Francis 2015, 8). In doing so, he offers a
cosmic view of ‘God’s creation’, an Integral Ecology that encompasses and governs all
of life with a foundational interdependence of beings in the world and the Divine
Persons. The Pope uses poetic language and plays with semiotics to declare that ‘God
is three’, he is the birdsong, the beauty of creation and the love of God; evoking in this
way the patriarchy in form of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit (Pope Francis
2015, 173). The masculine poetics defines the male character of God and converts men
into the only representatives and spokespersons of an abstract and universal divinity
(Gebara 2013).
Following the proposals of John Paul II on the natural complementarity of gender roles
and Benedict XVI’s disapproval of ‘gender ideology’ which he refers to as a threat to life
(Case 2019a), Francis defines a universal model for all aspects of ‘man’s nature’, society,
family, sexuality. The encyclical recognises the family as the origin of life for all living
beings and the centre for environmental defence that shapes how we use our bodies,
establishing as baseline the creation of an essential and fertile heterosexuality. In this
way, sexual diversity and homosexuality represent a diseased, abnormal, sinful threat
to Integral Ecology:
… valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able
to recognise myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joy-
fully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find
mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek ‘to cancel out sexual differ-
ence because it no longer knows how to confront it’. (Pope Francis 2015, 116)

This creationist organic view feminises the Earth as the ‘Mother and Queen of all cre-
ation’ (Pope Francis 2015, 175), emulating the cult of spiritual superiority of the sacrificed
woman-mother (Ary 1990). Faithful to Latin American marianismo,5 the common home
6 L. COBA AND M. MORENO

operates as a metaphorical uterus, that elevates the woman to the heavens, because she
reproduces the creation of God the Father. In this way it succeeds in disembodying
women and naturalising care for the world through a pain that purifies them:
Mary, the Mother who cared for Jesus, now cares with maternal affection and pain for this
wounded world … Carried up into heaven, she is the Mother and Queen of all creation …
(Pope Francis 2015, 182)

The flip side of the biblical view of woman, Eve, is also used to define the refusal of
motherhood as an ‘ecological sin’ and as a result of the ethical and moral disorder that
resides above all in today’s women. The Pope criticises the organisations that are lobbying
for reproductive health and sustains that ‘demographic growth is fully compatible with an
integral and shared development’ (Pope Francis 2015, 36). Abortion is deemed the result
of individualism and selfishness against human embryos and God’s creation. The encycli-
cal states:
Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with
the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other
vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a
human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? If personal
and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of accep-
tance that are valuable for society also wither away. (Pope Francis 2015, 89)

At the same time, appealing to human dignity, the document proposes an inner, commu-
nity and global ecological conversion akin to a revolutionary change, ‘other ways of living’,
that appreciate that happiness is found in things freely given, an ecological economy and
common goods (Pope Francis 2015, 23). Francis takes pity on the world’s poor but
ignores the care work that falls mainly on women who sustain extended reproduction in
devastated ecosystems. Thus, life on earth is God’s male creation and women are souls
whose superiority is based on their reproductive capacity and sexual purity, the non-fulfil-
ment of which is associated with ecological sin. Thus, the environmental ethic promoted
by the Pope reinforces patriarchal understandings of the subordinate place of women.

The Pan-Amazon Synod. The Cry of the Poor in the Vatican

Synod means walking together. Local churches, bishops, priests, missionaries, religious
leaders and committed lay people belonging to the Pan-Amazonian Network, REPAM,
promoted the active participation of indigenous peoples and communities in the prepara-
tory meetings leading to the 2019 event. The proposals were multiple: the implemen-
tation of Integral Ecology that includes the ancestral knowledge of the native peoples
for the care of biodiversity and the defence of the peoples; an ecological economy and
education; inter-religious dialogue; and transforming the church into an institution
with an ‘Amazonian face’. Some of these concerns were indeed taken up by the Pope.
For instance, during his visit to the southern Peruvian Amazon, Francis stated:
the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin have never been as threatened as they are at
present. Today, due to the scandalous offences of ‘new forms of colonialism’, ‘Amazonia is
being disputed on various fronts’ (Fr. PM). (Preparatory Document 2018)
 AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST STUDIES 7

The Synod consciously recognises the Amazon as one of the areas most vulnerable to the
destruction of the planet. It acknowledges that it ‘plays a critical role as a buffer against
climate change and provides invaluable and fundamental life support systems related to
air, water, soils, forests and biomass’ (Final Document 2019, 7).
Furthermore, Amazonia is home to three million indigenous people from around 390
different ethnic groups (Amerindia and Repam 2019, 85). Francis recognises the impor-
tance of ancestral wisdom that dwells among these peoples as it is thanks to them
that the rainforest has remained a gift to all the Earth’s peoples. The final document of
the Synod also expresses its admiration to those who fight to defend this geography
(Final Document 2019, 6–7). Accordingly, the Church commits itself to be an ally of the
Amazonian peoples ‘in denouncing attacks on the life of the indigenous communities,
projects that affect the environment, the lack of demarcation of their territories, as well
as the economic model of predatory and ecocidal development’ (Final Document 2019,
15).
The Church proposes a development that acknowledges the local cultures, traditions
and spiritualities, that is, the inculturation of the Church that is postcolonial and plural:
an ‘exercise in recognising the “other” in their own historical and cultural context’ (Amer-
india and Repam 2019, 42). This involves among other things that it speaks in the
languages of its peoples, that it introduces symbols from the native cultures that are com-
patible with the gospel, multiplies the number of catechists and other ministers, etc.
Finally, it should ‘welcome and support Indian, Afro-American and feminist theology as
well as ecotheology to support the configuration of a Church with its own face’ (Amerin-
dia and Repam 2019, 81).
While this proposal of inculturation aims to overcome the Amazonian history of reli-
gious and cultural colonisation in which the church has played a major role, it continues
to exclude the voices of ecofeminist and female indigenous, as will be discussed.

Unfinished Revision of Religious Gender Hierarchies

During the Synod, a group of religious women proposed the discussion of gender hierar-
chies within the Church, based on the recognition of the fundamental role and multiple
services that members of female religious orders and laywomen bring to the Church in
Amazonia. They also called for the ordination of deaconesses:
… the ordination of women to the diaconate in the Amazon will be a sign that the Church
effectively wants to recover the dignity of women, recognise their multiple deaconries and
provide a new face for ordained ministry. (Amerindia and Repam 2019, 104–5)

Instead of meeting this call for the ordination of women, the final resolutions of the Synod
highlighted ecclesial complementarity and focused on the services that religious and lay-
women provide in sustaining families, a foundational pillar for an Integral Ecology that
promotes fertility.
The work of women in both the indigenous and western worlds is multifaceted: they instruct
children and transmit the faith and the Gospel, they inspire and support human develop-
ment. The voice of women should therefore be heard, they should be consulted and partici-
pate in decision-making and, in this way, contribute with their sensitivity to Church
synodality. We value the role of women, recognising their fundamental role in the formation
8 L. COBA AND M. MORENO

and continuity of cultures, in spirituality, in communities and families. (Final document 2019,
26)

There was some consideration in the Synod for priests to form families, more than for
women’s gaining equality in terms of authority in the Church (Final document 2019, 26).
When it comes to the topic of female participation in church hierarchies, a ministry limited
to non-ordained roles was created for women, placing them in subordinate ranks in the
Catholic clergy, with assistant roles to priests and deacons. Instead of fostering the female
diaconate, it proposed the following:
In the new contexts of evangelisation and pastoral ministry in Amazonia, where the majority
of Catholic communities are led by women, we ask that an instituted ministry of ‘women
community leadership’ be created and recognised as part of meeting the changing
demands of evangelisation and care for communities. (Final document 2019, 26)

In other words, the decision reiterates the subordinate lower ranks for women in Church
life and limits their participation in decision-making while extolling their maternal role
both in the creation of life and in care for the natural world: as ‘protagonists and guardians
of creation and of “our common home”’ (26).
The Pontiff declared that he would publish a postsynodal exhortation before the end of
the year with respect to the debates on female participation.6 In this exhortation, Francis
sustains a view of women’s primary role as mothers, arguing it is reductionist to think that
women would gain more status through ordination, and that this could instead lead to
their contribution being weakened. He ratifies the ‘proper place’ for women where
they can serve the church and function in their roles:
because the Lord chose to reveal his power and his love through two human faces: the face of
his divine Son made man and the face of a creature, a woman, Mary. Women make their con-
tribution to the Church in a way that is properly theirs, by making present the tender strength
of Mary, the Mother. (Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation “Querida Amazonía” 2019)

Although many women participated in the Synod including experts, auditors and
invited guests, none of them had a right to vote on the final document (Corpas 2019). Tra-
ditionally only bishops vote, but the Pope allowed representatives of male religious orders
to vote too. Members of female religious orders and feminist theologians have demanded
access to public spaces and representation and in the assembly, 35 women handed over a
letter that requested that representatives of female congregations should be able to vote
in the same way that their male counterparts could. Nevertheless, the vote proceeded
without them. Both final documents of the Synod and the postsynodal exhortation recog-
nised the central role of women in the Amazonian church, but reiterated their maternal
and subordinate role, as assistants to ordained ministers, positions reserved for men.

In Consensus Against Gender Ideology

During the Synod, thousands of hectares of Amazonian rainforests were burnt in Brazil, a
record number of hectares, a process driven by land-use change dynamics arising from
forest clearing and burning for continued agricultural expansion.7 In his critique, the
Pope emphasised that ‘the missionary fire is better than that which blazes and
devours’8, urging the bishops to fight for the indigenous peoples and Amazonia, the
 AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST STUDIES 9

lungs of the world, denouncing this ‘crime’ against both. President Bolsonaro suggested
that the narrative about the fires was false and claimed that the Catholic Church was med-
dling in Brazil’s affairs, generating accusations of treason against the bishops who pro-
moted the Synod.
Yet, for the Pope, ecology does not only refer to climate change but also includes the
emotional connection to the cry of the poor and the way he draws closer to the impure
based on the Catholic mission to save the souls of innocents. The differences between the
Pope and Bolsonaro are evident: the Brazilian president is an ultraconservative evangelical
and climate-change negationist, but Francis is a conservative conservationist; both,
however, endorse ultraconservative pro-life groups. It is not a coincidence that the
Pope’s opening speech begins with references against the colonisation of ideologies
and ‘isms’:
Ideologies are reductive and lead us to exaggeration in our claim to comprehend intellec-
tually, but without accepting, comprehending without admiring, comprehending without
assimilating. So reality is understood in categories, and the more common ones are the cat-
egories of ‘-isms’. Thus, when we have to approach the reality of a certain indigenous people,
we speak of indigenisms, and when we wish to propose a way to a better life, we do not ask
them about it; we talk about developmentalism. These ‘-isms’ reformulate life starting from
the illuminated and the illuminist laboratory … (Pope Francis 2019)

Without a doubt, in this speech the Pope refers indirectly to ‘gender ideology’ pro-
moted by feminists who supposedly threaten the Church’s vocation and mission for
the family. The relationship between the Catholic Church and pro-life movements have
been strengthened since John Paul II, who published the Evangelium Vitae (1995) encycli-
cal in 1995, declaring the existence of a ‘struggle between the culture of life and the
culture of death’. For this pontiff, the separation between sexuality and reproduction
‘draws a line of continuity [that] can be traced between the demand for contraceptives,
sexual diversity rights and abortion’ (Vaggione 2019, 93). For him, this is rooted in a men-
tality that regards procreation as an obstacle to personal fulfilment and that notion to a
‘self-centred concept of freedom’ (John Paul II cited in Vaggione 2019, 92).
Likewise, Pope Benedict XVI defines feminists and defenders of sexual rights in a very
similar way to how environmentalists view logging companies: ‘If they are not stopped,
they will do away with human nature in the same way that logging companies are indis-
criminately chopping down the tropical rainforest’. So, for the former pope, in the same
way that a tropical rainforest can be destroyed, ‘the nature of human beings as man and
woman’ can also be destroyed (Benedict XVI cited in Case 2019b, 43).
Francis continues along the same line as his predecessors, especially in defence of the
family, a topic of urgent concern that led him to organise synods on the subject in 2014
and 2015. The Vatican has denounced the destruction of the family and abortion as risks
to human beings and their potential extinction, stating that they are against sexual and
women’s reproductive rights. Its government has declared the family to be the source of
life and has organised a series of global family gatherings since 1994. Francis maintained
that: ‘The crisis in the family has produced a crisis in human ecology because social
environments, just like natural environments, need protection’ (Francis I cited in Case
2019b, 45). After these synods, the church confirmed its position on viewing gender ideol-
ogy as a contemporary threat to the family and the heterosexual couple.
10 L. COBA AND M. MORENO

Although Francis signalled openness and raised expectations on the Church’s concern
for ecology and the exclusion of the poor, he supports the dogmatism on sexuality. Sexu-
ality, reproduction and life are all tied together and challenge the sexual politics of fem-
inist movements and those in favour of sexual diversity (Vaggione 2012, 59–60).9 This idea
keeps returning through the call to defend life in the texts on defending the environment.
In 2015, before the United Nations, Francis affirmed:
the defence of the environment and the fight against exclusion demand that we recognise a
moral law written into human nature itself, one which includes the natural difference
between man and woman, the absolute respect for life in all its stages and dimensions.
(Francis I cited in Vaggione 2019, 98)

Thus, hopes raised by the Ecclesia Semper reformada Synod which stated that ‘women are
not going to continue to be marginalised and excluded’10 have been dashed.

Indigenous Women, the Living Rainforest and Religious Self-

Determination
KAWSAK SACHA is a living being, with consciousness, constituted by all the beings of the
Jungle, from the most infinitesimal to the greatest and supreme. It includes the beings of
the animal, vegetable, mineral, spiritual and cosmic worlds, in intercommunication with
human beings, giving them what is necessary to reanimate their psychological, physical
and spiritual facets, thus restoring the energy, life and equilibrium of the original peoples.
(Native People of Sarayaku 2018)

Framing the Common Home as an organic feminine metaphor and manifestation of the
Universal God differs from Amazonian symbolic ecologies that define forest life cycles
through the agency of the non-human beings that inhabit it. The Kichwa Native People
of Sarayaku of the Ecuadorian Amazon provide an example of how indigenous under-
standings of the Earth differ from that expressed in the encyclical and Synod. The
Kichwa of Sarayaku have been recognised for their struggle against climate change
and promotion of what is called ‘Buen Vivir’.11 They are working to reclaim the self-
sufficiency and self-determination for the political subjects that inhabit the Amazonian
forests. The current conflict between indigenous and papal perspectives on the environ-
ment reflects this colonial history and has implications for gendered politics as well. The
colonial processes sought to do away with spiritual diversity along with the particular
ways subjects relate to their geographies (Gebara 1999). In this context, the Sarayaku pro-
posal expressed in the Kawsak Sacha environmental protection system, otherwise known
as the ‘Living Forest’ (Native People of Sarayaku 2018) recognises that the Earth has a will
of its own and also acknowledges the power of the beings that inhabit it and govern its
biodiversity. Furthermore, it recognises autochthonous spiritual authorities that interact
directly with the rainforest and do not separate nature from culture:
The Kawsak Sacha transmits the knowledge to the Yachak (wise elders) so that they can inter-
act in the world of the Protective Beings of the jungle, in order to maintain the balance of the
Pachamama, heal people and society (Native People of Sarayaku 2018).

The struggle of the indigenous peoples is not new. Since the latter years of the 1970s
ecologism has been a part of their political demands. Indigenous women have actively
fought for the environment and they have received particular recognition since the
 AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST STUDIES 11

start of the 2000s, when Latin America was impacted by the commodities boom that
expanded the extractive frontiers and encouraged the construction of mega infrastruc-
ture throughout Amazonia. In 2013, a group of women from the Ecuadorian Amazonia
walked to the capital, Quito, to protest opening up the land for oil drilling. They criticised
the notion that they were poor and proclaimed themselves the owners of their land’s bio-
diversity (Vallejo and García-Torres 2017; Sempértegui 2019; Coba and Bayón 2020).
Patricia Gualinga, a Sarayaku leader, has spoken in world summits on climate change,
explaining the importance of the Amazon rainforests, the interconnections between
deforestation and the destruction of ecosystems with water production in the world
and the excessive consumption of First World countries. The leader, daughter of a
renowned shaman (wise elder) and appointed kuraka (leader in Kichwa) by the Dominican
mission, received Catholic education and went on to become an active member and pro-
moter of the faith. Since her youth, she has prepared members of her community to
receive the sacraments. However, like other indigenous women and men, she exercises
religious self-determination by recognising the interconnections between the protective
beings of the jungle and the planet to combat climate change. During the Synod, she
challenged the Church to take specific actions and review its economic investments in
mining and the oil industry which are contradictory to the message preached in
Laudato Si’:
The Church has to disinvest, it has to withdraw the money it is using to distort the rights of
the people, to destroy nature and throw the Earth off balance. It has to start investing in
things that are sustainable and that give life to the planet, not those that generate death
… that destroy mother Earth, contaminate mother Earth, the ecosystems of the Amazonian
villages, one of the world’s fresh water sources that is connected … 12

In the Synod, women played a leading role just as they do in Amazonian pastoral roles
where two thirds of Amazonia’s indigenous communities are led by women,13 by being
the main agents of catechism. However, despite centuries of Catholic inculcation of com-
pulsory motherhood and Marian values, ancestral practices of contraception have not dis-
appeared, and self-governance of bodies is practised in indigenous communities despite
Church teachings to the contrary. This is a sensitive issue because, as several indigenous
organisations have announced, from the 1950s to the early 1980s, agencies such as the
Summer Institute of Linguistics, an American evangelical organisation, have experimen-
ted with non-consensual contraception on the bodies of indigenous women (Chancoso
1981). Reproductive freedom is thus a fundamental issue for indigenous peoples. In
addition, many local Catholic churches accuse feminism of colonialism, yet the connec-
tion between exploitation of nature and violence against women are inspiring feminist
responses.14 Thus, in recent years, the body-territory concept promoted by community
feminists rearticulates a relational ontology that posits its material continuity and the
importance of women in anti-colonial struggles.
Francis recognises the Amazonian women as generous, admirable and courageous, but
he does not discern that the women do not see themselves as poor but rather declare
themselves the owners of their territory’s biodiversity and that Catholicism is part of a
wider constellation of beliefs. The papal preaching rejects their claim to a new status
that recognises their participation in the Church, believing that this would only ‘clericalise’
them and in doing so, weaken their contribution. However, the demands of the
12 L. COBA AND M. MORENO

Amazonian indigenous women are politically important because they imply achieving
greater authority and prestige in communities where the Church itself has been respon-
sible for diminishing and concealing their strength. Despite the pedagogy of prejudice, in
many communities, the model of Mary-Eve oppositions does not operate in a disciplined
way; nudity does not necessarily imply shame, nor does pregnancy imply sacrifice.

Conclusion: Ambivalences
The figures of naked, pregnant, indigenous women challenged the Catholic binarism
between the pained and sacrificial Virgin Mary and Eve, the sinful, selfish, and loose.
The Integral Ecology proposed in Laudato Si’ is important as an instrument for the
environmental and territorial defence of indigenous peoples. However, it is based on
sexual and reproductive conservatism that defines the masculine and feminine as
essences of being male and female and part of a destiny created by God. Despite the rec-
ognition of climate change, the colonialist substratum persists, making violence against
racialised and dispossessed women invisible and naturalising the work of those who
sustain the reproduction of rainforest biodiversity in contexts of environmental
devastation.
The synod represents not only a commitment to defending the ecology of the Amazon,
but also the staging of power relations between the Vatican and the political and religious
diversity of former colonies, and the demands of the latter for the commitment of the
Church in the face of the cries of the poor. However, demands for reproductive autonomy
and openness to sexual diversity are far from being heard. Anti-feminism reigns in the
Church, pointing to ‘gender ideology’ as a treatise on ecological sins. Despite religious
imposition, Amazonian belief systems on the diverse agencies of forest beings persist,
just as diverse indigenous women sustain practices of bodily self-determination in their
communities. For Catholic indigenous women, the possibility of being ordained as deac-
onesses would reinforce their authority and place in the community.
The progressive position of Integral Ecology in the face of indigenous eco-territorial
struggles and recognition of the central role of women in these struggles constitutes
the Trojan Horse of anti-feminism that prevents gender equality within the Church
itself and in the communities that follow its teachings. This means that the interdepen-
dent relationships posited by Catholic creationism support an androcentric vision of a
Father who defines and governs life. Catholic creationism sees in the biodiversity of the
Amazon rainforest a prolific God and a world yet to be fully explored by the Church.
The Catholic Church’s recognition of the importance of the climate crisis contributes to
the defence of indigenous land and territory rights under threat by extractive projects
in the region. In so doing, however, it also seeks to impose a gendered hierarchy and con-
servative understanding of the Church structure, the family and nature, undermining the
role of some of the most vocal defenders of Amazonia – indigenous women.

Notes
1. Latin America is the region with the most Catholic parishioners in the world. Bergoglio was
the most acceptable for the political right and centre of a very conservative group of voters
(Hunt 2013, 293). Son of Italian immigrants, his presence implies a proximity to colonial
 AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST STUDIES 13

influences, the Italianisation of the Argentinian church, and its links with the elites (Mallimaci
2013).
2. See Verdú (2020).
3. The Church runs educational institutions, hospitals, orphanages.
4. Although diminished, the political, economic and spiritual church authorities administer
schools.
5. Translator note: Marianismo is ‘the cult of female spiritual superiority, that teaches that
women are semi-divine, morally superior to and spiritually stronger than men’. See:
Stevens, Evelyn P., and Martí Soler. 1974. “El Marianismo: La Otra Cara Del Machismo En
América Latina.” Diálogos: Artes, Letras, Ciencias Humanas 10 (1): 17–24. Accessed June 2,
2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27933189.
6. Nathalie Becquart has been appointed to the Synod of bishops in 2021, the first woman to be
given the right to vote. This may respond not only to demands on the Synod but to a long
struggle of women in the church, but it is a concession still far from the demand of female
ordination.
7. See Purdue University Agriculture News (2020).
8. In Semana (2019), El conmovedor rezo del Papa por la selva amazónica.
9. Francis affirmed that ‘there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to
be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.’
(Pope Francis 2021).
10. In Corpas (2019).
11. Buen Vivir (Sumak Kawsay) has emerged as a new model of living, an alternative to develop-
ment and, in particular, to neoliberalism. It establishes as foundational harmonious relation-
ships between human beings and nature in indigenous societies. It implies harmony and
reciprocity with mother nature, community coexistence, equity, solidarity, justice and
peace (Solón 2014).
12. In Iglesias y Minería (n.d.).
13. Words from Bishop Emeritus of Brazil, Erwin Kräutler cited in Corpas (2019).
14. Concerns about feminism come not only from the Catholic Church but also from the super-
iority of white-mestizo feminism, which in recent years has been challenged by indigenous
and Afro-descendant feminists.

Acknowledgements
We thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the manuscript and also
Sophie Bjork-James for her useful suggestions to improve the final version and Amy Bell for the
translation from Spanish to English.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This work was supported by Flacso Ecuador.

Notes on Contributors
Lisset Coba is an anthropologist, Doctor in Social Sciences, research professor at the Department of
Sociology and Gender Studies at Flacso-Ecuador. She investigates the historical and ontological
memory of women in the Ecuadorian Amazon and has worked on issues of feminism, neoliberalism,
14 L. COBA AND M. MORENO

and the environment. She is part of the feminist organisation Mujeres de Frente and participates in
the Collective of Women Anthropologists from Ecuador.
María Moreno is an anthropologist, with a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. Her
academic interests and professional career have focused on issues of gender, ethnicity and race in
Ecuador and Latin America. She recently participated as a postdoctoral researcher in a research
project on anti-racist struggles in Latin America (project LAPORA). She is currently a visiting pro-
fessor in the Department of Sociology and Gender Studies at Flacso-Ecuador.

ORCID
María Moreno http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0419-3623

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