ROME, October 22, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — A key organizer of the Amazon Synod has confirmed that the final document is “already written,” but has said that “no one knows” who wrote it.
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In comments to LifeSite outside the Synod Hall on Tuesday evening, Austrian-born Bishop Emeritus Erwin Kräutler of Xingu, Brazil, who is regarded as the principal author of the synod’s controversial working document, or Instrumentum laboris, said the ‘modi,’ or proposals, from the synod’s small working groups are now being “inserted” into the final document for review.
Asked by LifeSite if Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, the general relator of the synod, was one of the authors of the document, Bishop Kräutler, who is a member of the Amazon Synod’s information commission, offered an emphatic ‘no.’ He also denied having a hand in writing it.
Bishop Kräutler’s comments appear to contradict statements made on Monday by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna and a member of the final document drafting comittee. At an Oct. 21 synod press briefing, Cardinal Schönborn told reporters that the committee will only be assembling the recommendations of the small working groups whose work ends this week, but will not participate in the actual writing of the final document. That duty, he said, remains with Cardinal Hummes and his team.
Early on in the synod, Bishop Kräutler, who favors a female diaconate for the region, told LifeSite and other news outlets that it may be the “first step” to ordaining women priests.
Kräutler, who also favors a proposal to allow for married clergy in the regions, said he estimates “two-thirds” of bishops in the Amazon support the ordination of viri probati. “Indigenous peoples, at least those I’ve met, cannot understand this thing that man is not married,” he said.
It is anticipated that “the priestly ordination of married men” and the conferral of “a ministry adapted for the women who supervise communities,” as proposed in the synod’s Instrumentum laboris, will be included in the final document and submitted to the synod fathers for a vote.