Brazil's Catholic bishops have condemned the government for its failure to address deforestation in the Amazon. The government was
"absent" in combating "predatory development" in the world's largest rainforests, notes a media statement issued by the Brazilian
National Bishops' Council.
Concerned over the increasing soybean farming in the region, the bishops conducted a debate in the last week of February during their
annual fraternity campaign. The campaign is a "call for state and society to stop financing and tolerating a predatory model of
development", said the council. During the three-day campaign, the bishops also criticised the government's recent plans which allow
large-scale monitored harvesting of the Amazon rainforest and called on the government to control farmland expansion.
Separately, a bishop from Bahia state, Dom Luiz Flavio Cappio, who staged an 11-day hunger strike in 2005 over the government's
controversial plans to change the course of the river Sao Francisco, handed a letter to the president calling for a public debate on the
irrigation project.
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