Vatican officials: 'Querida Amazonia' is magisterium, Amazon synod's final doc is not.
by Hannah Brockhaus
Catholic News Agency
Vatican City, Feb.12.– Pope Francis' post-synodal exhortation on the Amazon is part of the Church's ordinary magisterium — that is officially a kind of Church teaching — while the final document of the Vatican’s 2019 Amazon synod is not, Cardinal Michael Czerny, special secretary of the Amazon synod, said Feb. 12.
The distinction in the authoritative weight of the two documents was also emphasized by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, and by Matteo Bruni, the director of the Holy See Press Office.
Bruni emphasized that “the apostolic exhortation is magisterium, the final document is not.” He later added that “anything in the final document should be read in the lens of the apostolic exhortation,” including any “application.”
“So we have two documents of two different kinds,” Cardinal Czerny said in a presentation to journalists.
Pope Francis released Feb. 12 the apostolic letter, "Querida Amazonia," which presents his response to the discussion of the Amazon synod, which took place in Rome over three weeks in October 2019.
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