The Vatican has ordered the Amazon rainforest to be temporarily relocated to a parish hall in Lima, the Holy See announced on Monday, after the Pope concluded that the forest could no longer be safely left in the hands of the market.
Under the plan, trees will be transported by lorry in sections of several hundred metres, each labelled and blessed before departure. A newly formed Pontifical Commission for Relocated Canopy has taken charge of the operation, and its director said the parish hall had been resized by knocking through four adjoining chapels and two schoolrooms. Residents of the district were asked to move their chairs to the courtyard and to water the seedlings twice a day.
Peruvian authorities confirmed that the rivers feeding the basin would be rerouted through a series of temporary channels, since the Amazon, at 6,400 kilometres, could not be fitted through the hall doors. Engineers from three ministries spent the weekend laying pipes along the Pan-American Highway.
The commission has already announced that local schoolchildren will take turns as official forest wardens, rotating shifts every seven days. Mass in the hall will now be held beneath the largest tree, which the Vatican describes as the most significant liturgical space in the Americas.