Catholic leaders assert pressure to protect Amazon forest
While Catholic leaders assert pressure on Bolsonaro’s regime to bolster protections of the Amazon jungle—one archbishop called the scorching a “true apocalypse”—and the papal synod is expected to denounce the situation, many evangelicals and Pentecostals said the fires had been hyped to target the president.
The evangelical outcry has not come from church leaders in the Amazon or among indigenous pastors. Instead, they say the fires in their area are no larger than before. Speaking with the Religion News Service, Leonardo Cortez, an Assemblies of God pastor in Cacoal, a city in the Amazon state of Rondônia, attributed the blazes to natural causes and the crises to political clashes.
“The environmental activists don’t understand that we take from the Earth a great part of our livelihood and of the commodities Brazil exports,” he said. “So it’s necessary for us to achieve a balance.”...
