—by Cardinal Pedro Barreto Jimeno, S.J., President, Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA)

On June 13th, his Eminence Cardinal Pedro Barreto Jimeno was the guest of honour at the G7 Jubilee People’s Forum organized with KAIROS Canada in Calgary, Alberta. His keynote address, delivered in Spanish and reproduced in English with his kind permission, is a moral message for G7 leaders that challenges them to act conscientiously at the G7 Summit. 

Cardinal Pedro Barreto Jimeno was the Archbishop of Huancayo, Peru, before he was elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope Francis to whom he was a close friend and confidant. His thoughts informed the ideas that late pope articulated in Laudato Si’. As a vocal and fearless defender of their social, economic, political and ecological rights, Cardinal Barreto is known for standing with Amazonian Indigenous peoples in their struggles against abuses perpetrated by mining corporations. He has long supported many of our projects and programs, including our 2019 For our Common Home campaign.

The following is an excerpt from his address: “On the eve of the G7, in which Canada will host the leaders of the world’s most powerful countries, we are living in a severe socioenvironmental crisis that disconcerts and discourages us. We see no immediate solutions. We are paralysed and powerless in the face of the multiple challenges we face as humanity.

However, something new is being born; a faint light is appearing at the end of the tunnel. We are living not in an era of change, but in a change of era. This is a propitious time, a kairos, as the Greeks called it, to indicate that it is a time for transformation of the individual and of society. In the Christian tradition, kairos describes “God’s time,” i.e., moments of grace to dream and act together as a human family; to learn from history, which is the teacher of life; and to consolidate processes of fraternity, listening and joint action to seek the common good of humanity and of future generations.

This kairos urges us to correct past mistakes that have affected and continue to affect people and our “common home,” our mother Earth, and urges us to step out of ourselves, out of our own personal and group interests, to unite hearts and minds, recognizing our brightnesses and our dark spots, our joys and sorrows, our anguish and hopes as humanity. Unlike chronos, which refers to chronological or sequential time, kairos represents a special time, when something significant happens for the good of humanity.

In this year 2025, in the Jubilee of Hope, we are pilgrims, and we are invited to a conversion of minds and hearts. The Jubilee is the expression of the kairos, as a historic opportunity for developed countries to recognize, as a matter of urgency, their ecological debt to developing countries, a consequence of the exploitation of natural resources, and the resulting corrosion of the land with polluting waste.” To read the Cardinal’s address in its entirety, click on the following link:  https://devp.org/en/a-moral-message-for-g7-leaders/