Cardinal Leonardo Steiner, O.F.M., of Manaus, Brazil, was elected to a four-year term as president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA) at the body’s sixth general assembly.
Cardinal Steiner vowed “to give continuity to that dream of Pope Francis to go to the Churches of the Amazonia and to be an ecclesial Church. We want to carry forward that dream of Pope Francis, implementing especially the four dreams he addressed to us in Querida Amazonia,” the 2020 apostolic exhortation on the Amazon.
CEAMA is an ecclesial conference (rather than an episcopal conference), and non-bishops hold significant leadership roles. Accordingly, one of CEAMA’s four new vice presidents is a priest from Peru; one is an indigenous layman from Bolivia; one is a laywoman from Guyana; and one is a religious sister from Cardinal Steiner’s archdiocese.