'The Church has an outstanding debt to pay': Afro-Latina Catholic delegate for Synod on Synodality

ROME — The concerns of the Afro-Latino community were centered at a synodal dialogue in Rome on Tuesday in Rome, hosted by the Latin American Observatory of Synodality.

The livestreamed event, “Sinodalidad y Afrodescendientes,” featured Sr María Suyapa Cacho Álvarez, one of the few Black Hispanic delegates to the Synod on Synodality, which is holding its final meetings in person throughout the month of October. 

A religious sister in the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul for nearly 40 years and a descendant of the Garifuna people, Suyapa has long been regarded as a preeminent advocate for Afro-Latinos and is one of three Honduran delegates to the synod.

“Throughout these three years of the synodal process, the [Episcopal Conference of Latin America] (CELAM) has been concerned to provide support to [Afro-Latino] and Garifuna pastoral care,” she said during the hourlong panel discussion at the Centro Internazionale Sant'Alberto.

“This accompaniment took place in different forms, moments and modalities of listening through forums, assemblies, meetings, dialogues, encounters, theological reflections, etc., through which the CELAM programs witnessed the clamor for help from the wounds and suffocation caused by exclusion.”

Building from the various CELAM conferences and documents issued since 1955, Suyapa spoke on the role of slavery in the genesis of Black identity in the New World, which she noted is claimed by hundreds of millions—not including the many Latinos of African descent who “have not yet found their Black identity.”

Less spoken of in some circles of the Church, including the episcopacy, she said, is the role of the Church in the transatlantic tragedy, which has resulted in “an outstanding debt to pay to Afro-descendant peoples.” She contrasted this institutional silence with Pope Francis’ willingness to speak up on the issue.

“Pope Francis recognizes that today, as yesterday, at the base of slavery there is a conception of the human person that allows us to treat others as an object,” Suyapa said, making reference to the Holy Father’s 2020 encyclical “Fratelli Tutti.”

“[He] sometimes expresses surprise that with such motivations, the church has taken so long to firmly condemn slavery and various forms of violence.”

The Honduran sister, whose own Garifuna people were scattered from their homeland in St. Vincent due to their ethnicity, says that racism against Afro-descended people continues today generally and among powerful Latin-American Catholics. She recalled how she “realized [she] was Black” after entering her largely White religious congregation—an experience she says is common in various Church contexts around the world.

The Synod on Synodality, she said, presents an opportunity to make amends, not just through dialogue but with action. She was joined in these sentiments by her Costa Rican partner on the panel, Fr Francisco Gerardo Hernández Rojas, head of CELAM’s pastoral action program since 2023. He said Pope Francis’ vision could be a guiding light in the push for justice among oft-forgotten people groups like Afro-Latinos.

“Pope Francis is not just a man of words. He is a man of gestures. He is a man of signs, of very strong symbols,” he noted, calling attention to his past support of migrants and the Vatican’s tentative plans to connect the 2025 Jubilee Year in Rome with a special initiative for members of the African diaspora.

The theme of concretely recognizing diversity in the Church has also come up as a discussion topic in the Synod itself, where this week a number of delegates, including bishops and cardinals, spoke during press conferences of the shifting center of the Church toward the Global South.

Of Black people specifically, Suyapa and Hernández agreed that their presence in the Americas has fostered a unique identity and strength that permeates the continents.

“Afro-descendants in all their diversities, we are peoples with a great sense of historical community, resilient and supportive, that Garifuna peasant women call ‘synodality’: that is, ‘You are my Brother. I take care of you. You take care of me,’ said Suyapa.

“We do synodality by taking care of others and Mother Nature, sharing our sorrows, pains, sufferings, joys. We share joy and give of the little we have with others, as our ancestors did and as the first Christian community did, regardless of one’s race, sex, condition, language, spirituality.”

Hernández noted that out of the furnace of suffering, members of the African diaspora have also forged their own ways of being and believing that bring to light new perspectives in the Church.

“I believe that this is a very important and substantial element today, when we talk about the Afro world, we not only talk about these hard and dramatic situations in which they were subjected, but also about their capacity in the midst of such adversity, to be able to build thought, to preserve their culture, to imbue ourselves with joy, with the strength even in pain of an attitude of hope,” Hernández said.

“Today, we have groups of men and women theologians capable of creating theology from Black culture that we call Black theology. This is a capacity for thought that not only occurs in Latin America; it also occurs in the north, for example, the great processes of liberation and the search for equity and justice of the Black movements in the United States and Canada.”

Suyapa was adamant that the richness of this perspective not be neglected at the synod, which she says has thus far overlooked the Black reality in particular—despite her personal attempts to include it in the first synod report in October 2023.

“It even hurts me a little that in the requests for forgiveness, they mentioned slavery but they didn't mention Black people,” she said, speaking of the penitential vigil held this year with Pope Francis and synod delegates on Oct. 1 at St. Peter’s Basilica.

“It seems to me that what is not named cannot be nailed down, no matter how much interest there is.”

Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.

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