A leading Asian cardinal says the world’s resources are at the mercy of a minuscule minority, and the “poor are doubly-conde-mned by an economy that favours the powerful and a carbon hegemony that destroys their liveli-hood.”

Myanmar Cardinal Charles Bo, the president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, was speaking at a March 19 event on the Amazon at Georgetown University.

The Amazon will be the topic of the Oct. 6-27 meeting of the Synod of Bishops in Rome.

During his lecture, the cardinal noted that Myanmar, also called Burma, is one of the poorest countries in the world.

“I have always worked with simple ethnic and indigenous communities. I come from a country where the Church is an ethnic, indigenous church,” Bo said. “We have watched in pain the destruction of the ethnic and indigenous way of life by the onslaught of market economy-oriented colonization. This is the norm elsewhere,” he said.