From coverage that’s been splashed across both Catholic and secular media, you might suppose the Synod on the Amazon was all about long-standing bones of contention between liberal and conservative Catholics – married priests, authoritative roles for women, liturgies that don’t look like a pontifical high Mass. But it wasn’t really about any of that. It was actually about the Amazon.

VATICAN CITY (CNA) -- In a video uploaded on YouTube Nov. 4, a young man from Austria claims that he was one of the two men who took five controversial statues from a church near the Vatican and threw them into the Tiber River.

Any decision on married priests should begin with a global synod of bishops, rather than a regional assembly like the synod on the Amazon, said the past president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

VATICAN CITY -- Members of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon asked that women be given leadership roles in the Catholic Church, although they stopped short of calling for women deacons.

VATICAN CITY -- Poor people from the Amazon have shown that God's creation must be treated "not as a resource to be exploited but as a home to be preserved, with trust in God," Pope Francis said.

VATICAN CITY -- While highlighting the gift of celibacy and the need for celibate priests in the Amazon region, the final document of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon has urged Pope Francis to allow the priestly ordination of married deacons to serve in remote areas.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis apologized that two men entered a church near the Vatican, took controversial statues and tossed them into the Tiber River.

VATICAN CITY -- A change to the Code of Canon Law made by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 provides a canonical path to allow the ordination of women deacons, a Brazilian bishop said.

VATICAN CITY -- Addressing concerns about a proposed Amazonian rite in the Catholic Church, an indigenous participant at the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon called on Catholics to soften their hearts and understand the needs of Catholics in the region.

VATICAN CITY -- The way to rid the Catholic Church of clericalism is by giving laywomen a greater role in making decisions, a Bolivian bishop said.

VATICAN CITY -- Solutions to environmental problems discussed at the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon must involve not just Amazonian nations, but countries in Europe and North America, bishops said.

VATICAN CITY -- Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna said that as a European member of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, his first task is to listen and his second task is to examine ways his lifestyle and that of his community contribute to the suffering of the Amazonian people.

ROME, Italy (CNA) -- A video uploaded to YouTube on Oct. 21 shows two men taking several wooden figures of a nude pregnant woman from a church near the Vatican and throwing them into the Tiber River.

ROME -- More than a half century after a group of bishops at the Second Vatican Council made a solemn pledge to live a simple lifestyle close to their people, a group of participants from the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon signed a new pact in the Catacombs of Domitilla.

VATICAN CITY -- Whether or not the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon helps open the door to ordaining women deacons, women will continue to play a fundamental role in ministry in the church in the region, religious sisters said.