Ecological ritual performed in Vatican gardens for pope’s tree planting ceremony

Vatican City, Oct 4, 2019 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis witnessed an indigenous performance at a tree planting ceremony in the Vatican gardens Friday during which people held hands and bowed before carved images of pregnant women.

A group of people, including Amazonians in ritual dress, as well people in lay clothes and a Franciscan brother, knelt and bowed in a circle around images of two semi-naked pregnant women in the presence of the pope and members of the curia.

After witnessing the ritual, Pope Francis set aside his prepared remarks, opting instead to offer the Our Father without comment.

The ceremony in the Vatican gardens — organized by the Global Catholic Climate Movement, Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network, and the Order of Franciscan Friars Minor — was described as a celebration of the feast of St. Francis and the opening of the Synod of bishops on the Pan-Amazon region Oct. 6-27.

Participants sang and held hands while dancing in a circle around the images, in a dance resembling the “pago a la tierra,” a traditional offering to Mother Earth common among indigenous peoples in some parts of South America. No explanation was provided by the event organizers as to why the dance was performed for the Feast of St. Francis or what it symbolized.

Pope Francis remained seated in a chair outside the group throughout the ceremony.

A representative from the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development said after the event that the dicastery’s officials were invited to attend the event, but neither orgnized nor promoted it.

People carried bowls of dirt from different places around the world, each symbolizing a different issue from ecological devastation to migration. The dirt was placed around a tree from Assisi, which was planted as a “symbol of integral ecology.”

After what appeared to be the offering of prayers by participants, who prostrated themselves on the grass around a blanket upon which fruit, candles, and several carved items were set, an indigenous woman approached the pope and presented him with a black ring, which appeared identical to the one she was wearing.

The ring appeared to be a tucum ring — a black ring worn in Brazil and Latin America as a sign of dedication to certain social causes, and often associated with liberation theology advocate Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga.

The Vatican declined to comment on the ring.

Prior to the pope’s decision not to offer his prepared remarks, Cardinal Peter Turkson, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, spoke about Francis’ environmental encyclical Laudato Si.

“Not only is our environment deteriorating globally, little effort is also made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic human ecology,” Turkson said.

“God’s Word transformed ‘chaos’ at the dawn of creation into a ‘cosmos,’ an ordered world system, capable of supporting human life, and suitable to be home for man. And the lesson here is simple: ‘Chaos’ with the Word of God becomes ‘Cosmos.’ Conversely, ‘Cosmos’ without God’s Word turns into ‘chaos,’” he said.


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14 Comments

  1. I remember hearing about stuff like this back in the 1970’s & ’80’s. It should have died a quiet death. It’s too bad we have to resurrect it again.

    • Mrscracker there are wild ceremonies – the Vatican Garden Amazonia Synod ceremony among the milder, and there are wilder [meaning unconventional Liturgy]. If you remember, seaside marriages were the thing post Vat II. Fr Malachi Brendan Martin [Irish born controversial Jesuit priest confidant to Paul VI unhappy with the dissolution of faith post Vat II permitted to leave his order accepted by the Archbishop of New York] gives one such wild account in his book Hostage to the Devil. A priest performing the ceremony unknown to all except for the suspicion of another priest friend, onlooker from a short distance – was diabolically possessed. The celebrant priest suddenly leaped at the hopeful bride dragged her into the pounding surf both grappling she for her life he attempting to drown her. His priest friend plunged into the surf with others and saved her then dragged his possessed friend away. The priest was consequently exorcised with permission of the Bishop. Fr Martin who attended several exorcisms gave the background of this priest’s possession. He was a young priest, nature lover who began finding intense, what he presumed mystical experience contemplating beautiful pastoral scenery. It got to the point that he began unconsciously substituting Eucharistic Prayer wording with aspects of nature including the consecration similar to This is my sunshine rather than Body. Bizarre yes but apparently true. His friend picked up on this and suspected something deeply wrong, his fears confirmed at the seashore wedding ceremony. Added to this I can’t withhold a sense of alarm over the Vatican Amazonia ceremony. Aside from Fr Martin’s book my experience in Africa, and with some of our Southwest Native Americans was that virtually all if not all the pagan ceremonials, rituals had an underlying evil dimension, some immoral finality.

  2. Assisi tree planting symbol of the Little Poor Man who through the years became more identified with butterflies and Nature than the Crucified Savior whose wounds he bore. Parallel to the earthly humanization of the saintly mystic is Christianity’s demythologizing less mystical more mundane guitars banjos Gregorian chant a memory. Anomaly is global minded brethren are rigidly intolerant toward brethren with discriminating mores. Stridently so. Britain passed law that certain words are forbidden everywhere anytime the home no longer sanctuary arrest possible. Portend? Semi pagan marvelous display of European man stolid in appearance with painted face semi religious the woman shaman who indeed made the sign of the Cross after she exorcised the Pontiff with secret powder magic words at the Vatican lawn ceremony. Woman shaman woman priests. A passing thought. It appeared early on we’re at a crossroads Christ’s Revelation one pathway Paradigm Shift the other. Question for us all is which pathway the Bishop of Rome will take and which will we? Faith in Christ dispels that question.

    • “Which pathway will the bishop of Rome take” this bishop of Rome just had shamans performe a ceremony steps away from where Peter was curcified upside down. The path he has been on from the start to change the dogmatic teachings of Christ and His church. How much more does he need to do or not do? The not do is getting rid of those who promote that which Jesus said “NO” and are trying to instigate well “yes” those aren’t really sins and there is no punishment except for the “ridgid” who actually do believe in “death, judgment, heaven and hell” along with evanelizing the world to come to Christ and His Church. Geeze this pontif has said not to evangelize and essentially all doctrines of differing beliefs are wished by God which goes directly (do not pass go) against “I am the way, the truth, the light no one comes to the Father except through Me”. Love all with the charity to get them into heaven.

      • Katedee this Pontiff is by far the greatest challenge in its long history to the Church’s faith in Christ. Know we’re being tested.

  3. While the surface of the earth is some 130 Billion acres, why does it now become necessary to smear Amazonia/Wiccan graffiti on the 109 acres of Vatican grounds? Even as Amazonia bishops–some of the curiously German–continue to wallow in a working-paper swamp. Pope Pius IX, the Prisoner of the Vatican, weeps.

    To his credit, the manipulated Pope Francis remained outside the circle, and even departed from “prepared remarks” (no doubt prepared by some puppet-master ghost writer) and instead appealed to Our Father who [still] art in heaven.

    And Michalangelo’s overhead Sistine Ceiling still recalls the real Creation, if only in barely a quarter of an acre of surface area, but at least it’s above our eyes rather than below our feet–as if the metaphysical terms “above” and “below” still mean anything.

    As with history’s disfigured “Amazons” of old, a New Paradigm that amputates the present from Tradition simply is not the way to keep abreast of significant truths.

  4. “People carried bowls of dirt from different places around the world, each symbolizing a different issue from ecological devastation to migration. The dirt was placed around a tree from Assisi, which was planted as a ‘symbol of integral ecology.’ ”

    Yes, nothing says “integral” (or a concern for Nature as “natural”) like placing samples of dirt from various diverse sources that realistically and organically do not occur around a particular tree in a particular place in time. An apt gesture which also embodies the forced sense of “natural” in same sex marriage, transgender ideology, “death with dignity” and a female priesthood, which invariably, shortly after the sobbing “newly ordained” ex-nun (who always just “knew” she had a vocation) hugs all her priestess friends becomes likewise in short order first pantheistic but then Chthonic and Christless, pretty much lesbian, “women love better” witchcraft.

    Forgive me. I give little credit to Bergoglio for staying out of the circle or no comments. This may even be his “respect” for the whole thing and his silence just part of his politics.

    “After what appeared to be the offering of prayers by participants, who prostrated themselves on the grass around a blanket upon which fruit, candles, and several carved items were set, an indigenous woman approached the pope and presented him with a black ring, which appeared identical to the one she was wearing.”

    Ah, the commitment to the poor (and “making a mess”) in the tucum ring! No worries, folks! No need to say to Bergoglio, “You know the first year of marriage can be quite an adjustment.”

    So much of this makes even Plotinus seem like Fulton Sheen. It’s not “matter” here that’s “evil”…but “matter as deity?” I do think that such a religion (this emerging religion) is indeed ultimately “evil” (and allows for infanticide, sexual abuse/poly-perversity and euthanasia as “natural”) and is ultimately non-transcendent…non-salvific…and for all the talk of being “cosmic” it is primarily tribal…and yes, it also appeals to the Germans.

    With regards to St. Francis of Assisi, much of this “mess” started already with a post Vatican II counterfeit “Franciscan joy” popularized by Franciscans in the mid-80s through the 90s but still in progress? their convenient take on St. Francis’s reverence for the Eucharist and churches in almost mandatory loud, yes campy guffawing in the sanctuary and boisterous laughter and chatting after Liturgies.

    The loss of reverence for the Eucharist opened the door for this “new church.”

    I’ll say it again: this is just apostasy.

    • Apostasy, or something worse and even more interesting?

      Perhaps the lawn artistry and symbolism (following the collage/chaos instrumentum laboris) is just a passing symptom of syncretic, confused and fused evangelization, devoid of clear Christian affirmation. First the Tree of Life, then the Tree of “the knowledge of good and evil,” then the Burning Bush on holy ground, BUT NOW and once again a flat-universe and a merely cosmic tree rooted in only the dampened ground of Mother Earth.

      A piece of lawn art serving as a territorial marking for a new-paradigm/hybrid religion? And, as dampened ground, a natural marking of territorial dominance as if by any typical quadruped in the wild during rutting season?

      The historic elevation of some pre-Christian elements into the new creation of Christian symbolism/channels for grace was one thing (e.g., fertility and the family); but the surrender today of Christian verities to pre- post- and anti-Christian paganism and hybrid lawn markings is quite another (“images of two semi-naked pregnant women”).

      The Amazon anaconda kills by incremental strangulation and then swallows its prey whole, head first. One could wonder, after this desecration (yes?) of the Vatican ground whether it should be reconsecrated…

  5. “By Courtney Grogan
    Vatican City, Oct 4, 2019 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis witnessed an indigenous performance at a tree planting ceremony in the Vatican gardens Friday, during which people held hands and bowed before carved images of pregnant women, one of which reportedly represented the Blessed Virgin Mary. ”

    An additional detail from CNA presented above.

    That and other aspects of this “ecological ritual” may very well require a reconsecration…to follow up on the “ecological ritual.”

    Perhaps Bergoglio being outside the circle was actually a part of the ritual, to symbolize/embody that a new church was being established with the Petrine office and Faith being…”developed.”

    And all of this is happening during the Month of the Rosary.

  6. The “Sin of Manasseh” (2 Kings 21: 7-15) leads to the exile of Judah and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Just what was the “sin”? Exactly what just occurred in the Vatican Gardens. Manasseh, the King of Judah brought an Asherah into the courtyard and then into the Temple to “worship” (bow before). Just what is an Asherah? A carved graven image of the fertility goddess and/or a tree. Does the Pope not read the Bible?

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