Ninth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

This article proposes an integral-ecology based model of Spirituality in the Development; a model that signals a new paradigm to discuss the increasingly devastating sustainably problems facing our planet. The model proposed systemically integrates three tenets: the Pope’s new spirituality that starts with the call of Pope Francis in the encyclical Laudato Si; the Central and South American ancestral indigenous knowledge that starts from a thousand-year-old wisdom compiled in Suma Kawsay; and, the Ecology of Liberation developed by progressive Catholics leaders in Latin America. We test the model and assess the importance, acceptance and the impact of the Pope’s encyclical letter in the Latin American region by critically analyzing the document as an attempt to understand how integral ecology can be deployed in Latin American, in particular in Coyaima, a Colombian indigenous community. Finally, we intend to raise some suggestions as to how to improve a dialogue between knowledge that brings the different agents closer together and propose alternatives of sustainability that can be applied at a global level.