Indigenous Catholics hoping the next pope will be injedit Francis’s approach to gender

Simojol, Mexico – At the recent service in the Remote Mexican community, Simojovel, Catholic and Majs symbolism mixed on the altar as a deacon – his wife next to him – he read the Gospel in his original gender and recalled Pope Francis’ Learning: Work together on human rights, justice and mother earth.

Scene in a small church in Mexico’s poorest state, Chiapas, she conveyed many Francis messages delivered during the 2016 excursion in the region and his other visits to distant flunts, including Amazon, including Amazon Congo and Jungle Papua New Guinea.

He also illustrated what world autochthonous Catholics don’t want to lose with death The first pontiff from the southern hemisphere: Their relatively newfound voice in the institution who used to discuss whether “Indians” had souls while supporting European forces while looting America and Africa.

“We ask God that the job (Francis) did for us not in vain,” said Deacon Juan Pérez Gómez for his little community. “We ask you to choose a new Pope, a new servant, which hope that Lord thinks the same way.”

Francis was the first Latin American Pope and the first from the row of Jesuit, who were known, among other things, their frantic works with the most accustomable groups of society. Although some feeling Francis could do more for his people during his 12 years as Pontiff, the indigenous Catholics largely praise him by champing his causes, looking for forgiveness for historical mistakes of the church, and allows them to embed the aspects of their domestic cultures in practicing their faith.

Among the places where his death hit especially heavy lowlands of Bolivian Amazon, which was the treatment of preset missions Francis praised To bring Christianity and European education and an economic organization in the human being in humane.

Marcial Fabricano, 73-year-old leader of the autochthonous Mojon people, remembers the crying during Francis’ 2015 Visit to Bolivia When the pope asked for forgiveness for crime, the church committed against the sedric people during the winning colonial era of America. Before the visit, his and other autochthonous groups sent Francis a message to ask him to push his owners to respect them.

“I believe Pope Francis read our message and moved it,” he said. “We are the last bastion mission. … we can’t be ignored.”

That South American tour was coming soon after the publication of one of the most important encycles of Francis in which he called on a revolution to repair the “structurally perverse” global economic system to exploit the poor and to close the earth in the “huge pile of dirt”. He also encouraged the Church to support the movements that defended the territory of marginalized people and finance their initiatives.

“The first time (Pope) felt like us, he thought of our great ally,” said Anitalia Pijachi Kuyuedo, Colombian member who participated in Amazon Synod in Rome, where Francis showed interest in the Amazon, including the roles of women.

Piechi Kuyuendo, 45, said he hopes that the next pope also work closely with gender people. “With my death, we face huge challenges.”

Pérez Gómez, 57, is able to help in his small Catholic community in Mexico, because the church has restarted the program for a dude under Francis.

Dealing with the clergy shortage in the 1960s, the Church pushed the idea of ​​deacons – married men who can perform some priestly rituals, such as baptism, but not others, such as the enforcement of mass and hearings.

Samuel Ruiz, who spent four decades as Bishop San Cristóbal de Las Casas, trying to improve the lives of indigenous people Chiapas, saw the chat as a way to promote faith between them and shape what he called the “native church.” The initiative for the deacon was such a hit in the Ugly Diocese, however, that the Vatican stopped there in 2002. years, it was worried that Ruiz was used as a step towards which married priests and women’s dancers. Hatt was built in 2014. years.

Pérez Gómez, who waited for 20 years before he finally determined Djakon in 2022, said he was inspired by the Ugly Vision for the “Gender Church”. He said Francis reminded him to Ruiz, who died in 2011. and who went with explaining the true purpose of the church as “release and Evangelizer”.

“Francis also discussed the liberation,” said Pérez Gómez, adding to hope that the next pope of the action would take place.

It was half a century since the Vatican allowed himself to be massively maintained in the languages ​​except Latina when Francis visited Chiapas in 2016. and went a step further.

During the mass that was highlighted by his visit, Mr. Prayer sang in Tsotsil, the readings were carried out on two more Maja languages, ingredients and Ch’ol, as they prayed and indigenous women stood on the altar.

Chiapas was a politically sensitive choice for Pope a visit, which was not easily negotiated with the Vatican or Mexican government, according to the Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi, which was then Bishop San Cristobal. In 1994. He saw the armed uprising of Zatista, who sought rights for indigenous peoples.

Getting the Vatican to enable Majana rituals in the mass mass was also tricky, but Arizmendi reminded that there was a useful precedent: Congo.

In 1988, the Vatican approved the first cultural innovation in the mass, the so-called Rite, which is the source of national pride and continental involvement, said Rev. Abbé Paul Agustin Madimba, a priest in Kinshasa. “It shows the value that the Church gives to African.”

Francis quoted Zaire Rite, which enabled some local music and danced in mass, to argue for such accommodation with other indigenous Catholics around the world.

The decision was made only by the expansion of Catholicism, which in many places, “but also the theological act of deep listening and conversion, where the Church recognizes that it is not the owner of the cultural truth, but servant for each nation,” Arthuro Lomelí, Mexican Social Anthropologist.

It was a Vatican way to see indigenous rituals not as “threats, but as legitimate ways to express and live faith,” he said.

On Saturday after Francis’ death, Pérez Gómez stopped the church in the city near his village to pick up the stories about communities, would be given during his service tomorrow. Because the sector, he needs a priest to pay them for him before time.

He and his wife, Crecencia López, do not know who will be the next pope, but they hope someone who shares Francis’ compliance with indigenous people. And they smiled at the thought of that one day he could become a priest and she was a deacon.

“We are not more cases, but also people,” and that is thanks to God and his envoys, “said Jatik Samuel (Ruiz)” and “Jetik Francis”, and Fire Gómez, using the paternity expression of great respect in T Mussel.

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AP Journalists Carlos Valdez in La Paz, Bolivia; Fabiano Maisonnave in Rio de Janeiru (Brasil) and Jen-Yves Kamale in Kinshas, ​​Congo contributed to this report.