Pachamama Christianity: The Pan-Amazonian Synod and Indigenous Religious Identity

In the early hours of the morning of October 21, 2019, two right-wing Catholic men broke into the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, Rome. They stole four carved wooden statues of a naked pregnant woman that had been on display and used in a papal ceremony during the Pan-Amazonian Synod that was nearing its conclusion and threw them into the Tiber River. What was the meaning of these statues and the ceremony in the presence of the pope in which they appeared? Was this an example of syncretism, of dual religious belonging, or an exercise in what Pope Francis called “daring prudence” in terms of inculturation of the gospel? This article, the 2022 Louis J. Luzbetak Lecture at Catholic Theological Union, takes the incident of the theft of the statues and the controversy that followed as an opportunity to propose a more creative and bolder approach to the relationship between mission and culture.