"Fraternidade e Amazônia": a proposta ambientalista da Campanha da Fraternidade de 2007

Abstract

The goal of this research was to distinguish the representations of man, nature and their mutual relations in the environmental proposals elaborated by the 2007 Fraternity Campaign, whose theme was "Fraternity and Amazon". Therefore, this research tried to identify the positions of the Catholic Church during the year of 2007 through the examination of primary sources like: works from Catholic authors, the Christian Family magazine and the websites of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops and the Fraternity Campaign. These sources formed the corpora of the research. The data showed that the environmental theme was not very present in the Catholic media, representing in general less than 10% of the examined material. The Fraternity Campaign directed its efforts specifically to the social problems of the populations, and when it talked about Amazonia's environmental issues, it showed a romantic and anthropocentric discourse, rich in metaphors. This research concluded that the environmental theme served as a way to attract the attention of different sectors of society and the media to the injustice and social inequality in Brazil, in the same fashion of the actions based on the Liberation Theology.