Faith Matters
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Under Threat of Death -
Erwin Kräutler, Bishop to Brazil's Indigenous Flock
Dom Erwin Kräutler is bishop of Xingu, one of the world's largest and most dangerous dioceses. A native of Austria, he came to Brazil 40 years ago. The seat of his diocese is Altamira, but Dom Erwin - as he's called locally - only gets to visit the remote communities of his diocese every few years.It takes him up to three hours by plane; in the rainy season the roads are just a sea of mud. The Amazon region is a challenge to the bishop in every respect. Dom Erwin is against the destruction of the rain forest, but he also campaigns on behalf of landless peasants, of children forced into prostitution and of the indigenous people who are being driven from their hunting and fishing grounds. He is chairman of CIMI, the Indigenous Missionary Council of the Roman Catholic Church. Because of the "Option for the Poor" that he practices, there is a price on his head.
Faith Matters accompanies Dom Erwin as he travels around his diocese: in a canoe on the Rio Xingu, on a pastoral visit to homeless small farmers along the Transamazonica highway, at a huge rally of indigenous people organized by the CIMI to protest against the Belo Monte reservoir dam in Altamira. The government plans to build a hydroelectric power plant on the Rio Xingu, the fourth largest in the world. The local people are afraid for their hunting and fishing grounds. With a team from the CIMI, we observe the social effects of the relocation of the Brazilian Indians: there are those who have already been displaced by another dam project; now they are in danger of being forced off the land by soya and sugar cane, the raw materials of the boom in bio-fuels and Brazil's main exports. The bishop continues to fight for the rights of the indigenous people. Because of the death threats, he is under police protection 24 hours a day.
