"I can be a married man and a priest," said a Bolivian pastor at the Synod for the Amazon

[Inkriql]

“If my community asks for it, I would accept to be ordained a priest,” Enrique Materecco, a 70-year-old married Bolivian man, who participates in the synod on the Amazon and represents the example of one of the most controversial points of the assembly: the possible exception to celibacy.

In the synod on the Amazon that began on Monday and that will end on October 27 will discuss one of the suggestions that communities have made in the preparation meetings for participants to debate and that has been the cause of enormous criticism and even of threats of ruptures.

“Affirming that celibacy is a gift for the Church, it is requested that, for the most remote areas of the region, the possibility of priestly ordination be studied for elderly people, preferably indigenous, respected and accepted by their community, even if they already have a constituted and stable family, with the purpose of assuring the Sacraments that accompany and sustain the Christian life ”, reads in the controversial point 129.

And this is the case of Enrique Matereco Pofueco, elderly, indigenous of the Mojeño people, respected by the community, a kind of “pastor” for the three communities of Bermeo, territory of the province of Moxos, in the Bolivian department of Beni, where There is not a single cure. Efe entered Matareco in the Plaza de San Pedro, because he is one of the participants in the synod on the Amazon, among experts, bishops, religious.

“Here I have come to cooperate in this synod. We also do our part. And it is also necessary that we, as indigenous people, help those who are helping us, ”he explains.

Matereco is also a youth animator, he spends a lot of time with the youth of his community and every Sunday he goes to nearby towns to celebrate the liturgy of the Word "because they have no one to celebrate it." "We are three, my brother, another partner and I, who serve these communities", walking on foot the leagues that separate their locality Bermejo and the towns of Fatima, Argentina of Mojo and Santa Rita.

"When Mass is celebrated there are about 20 or 30 faithful but if not, only five come and it hurts to close the chapel and that's why I make the effort," he explains.

For this reason, he reveals that he had already spoken with the parish priest of his area, of this possibility of being able to become what the church calls “viri probati”, a married man and ordained priest, and what the ultraconservative wing of the Church puts on .

“I had told my pastor there that he would accept, but it depends on the community and not on me. I would accept it, "he says, since" it is necessary "because" there is no one to celebrate the sacraments; communion, marriage, baptism ... "

Pope Francis would ask him to "pray for us those who are far away in a corner, but that we do not forget what we have to do as Catholics."

He explains that he will remind the participants that the synod means “good walk” and that before the natives of his region “walked well, but now you can't. They do not let us pass. There is everything wired there. ”

“We have to ask permission to go fishing. We used to live in peace before, ”he explains and argues that they have always taken care of the forest“ so that nobody spoils it ”because“ the indigenous people have never destroyed our territory ”.