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EarthBeat Weekly: Catholic presidents of US, Brazil to meet with climate on the agenda

Source: EarthBeat Weekly: Catholic presidents of US, Brazil to meet with climate on the agenda

On Friday, February 10, 2023, two Catholic presidents are set to meet, and climate change is on their discussion agenda.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office on Jan. 1, is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House on Feb. 10 to discuss “issues confronting the United States and Brazil, including climate change, economic development, and peace and security,” according to a joint statement issued Jan. 9.

A lack of environmental protection and attention to the concerns of Brazil’s Indigenous and other traditional peoples under the previous administration of President Jair Bolsanaro has left the Yanomami people in a dire state of health and hunger.

Yanomami leaders told Cardinal Leonardo Steiner — the first cardinal from the Amazon region — that “the current crisis is the result of the dismantling of the health care services provided by the government to the Indigenous over the past few years and of the invasion of their territory by illegal miners,” as Eduardo Campos Lima reported Wednesday.

Steiner has condemned illegal mining in the region before, because of the violence it inflicts not only upon the local environment, but also toward the people who live there, Justin McLellan reported for EarthBeat last August.

Now, the cardinal and head of the Archdioceses of Manaus is among those church leaders providing aid to the Yanomami people and also calling for those who are responsible for the “current chaos,” which some are calling a “genocide,” to be held accountable.

Read more in “Brazilian church provides aid to the Yanomami, calls for justice after ‘genocide’.”

While challenges like budget shortages and a conservative Congress with many members who are against environmental protection measures still face Brazil and its new president, Catholics in the country have a “renewed hope” with Lula leading the government, Bishop Evaristo Spengler of Marajó told Campos Lima for a story Thursday at EarthBeat. 

During his first month in office, Lula has already visited Yanomami territory and announced the urgent distribution of food and medicine to communities there. He also named Marina Silva as his minister of environment, which Spengler, who heads the Pan-Amazon Ecclesial Network, said was a reassuring sign due to Silva’s “longtime experience in defending the Amazon.”

Bishop Vicente Ferreira, the secretary of the Bishops’ Conference’s Special Commission on Integral Ecology and Mining, told Campos Lima that Lula “is learning more and more about integral ecology,” and “will probably mention the Yanomami, the people who were impacted by mining projects,” during his planned meeting with Biden.

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