Pope Francis denounced clericalism and called it a “scandal” to see young priests buying lace vestments at tailor shops in a strongly-worded speech to the Synod on Synodality on Wednesday.
Speaking to an assembly of hundreds of synod members on Oct. 25, the pope said that when clerics overstep their roles and “mistreat the people of God, they disfigure the face of the Church with macho and dictatorial attitudes.”
Pope Francis described the faithful people of God as “patiently and humbly enduring the scorn, mistreatment, and marginalization of institutionalized clericalism.”
“It is enough to go into the ecclesiastical tailor shops in Rome to see the scandal of young priests trying on cassocks and hats, or albs and lace robes,” he added.
“Clericalism is a thorn. It is a scourge. It is a form of worldliness that defiles and damages the face of the Lord’s bride,” he said. “It enslaves the holy, faithful people of God.”
The pope made his speech during the final week of the nearly monthlong synod assembly, where he listened to the interventions of cardinals, bishops, priests, religious sisters, and laypeople speaking about “synodality” and their experiences in the Church.
Pope Francis cited only one delegate’s intervention in his speech — that of Sister Liliana Franco, a Colombian religious sister who was one of 42 women who participated in the Amazon Synod, where she spoke at a controversial tree planting ceremony in the Vatican Gardens.
In his speech, Pope Francis praised the female intuition that led women to approach Jesus’ empty tomb after the Resurrection. He noted that many members of the Church hierarchy received their faith from their mothers and grandmothers, adding that the faith is often transmitted “in a feminine dialect.”
Much of the pope’s speech focused on “the scourge” of clericalism and worldliness, a theme that the pope has been focused on since the start of the synod.
During the first week of the synod assembly, Pope Francis gave each participant a copy of a book that he wrote titled “Santi, non mondani: La grazia di Dio ci salva dalla corruzione interiore” (“Holy, not Worldly: God’s Grace Saves us from Interior Corruption”).
The book is a compilation of a text published by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires in 2005 called “Corruption and Sin” and a strongly-worded letter that Pope Francis wrote to all priests in the diocese of Rome on Aug. 5.
“How naturally we speak of the princes of the Church, or of episcopal promotions as getting ahead career-wise … the worldliness that mistreats God’s holy and faithful people,” Pope Francis said in his synod speech.
The pope added that he was pained to find that some parish offices offer a “price list” for sacramental services, like a “supermarket of salvation” where priests act as “mere employees of a multinational company.”
“Either the Church is the faithful people of God ‘on the way,’ — holy and sinful — or it ends up being a business offering a variety of services,” Pope Francis said.
On 17 October, Francis received Sr Jeannine Gramick IBVM, the co-founder of New Ways Ministry, for a 50-minute audience in the Apostolic Palace.
“The meeting was very emotional for me,” Sr Jeannine said, praising Francis for his “humility, his love of the poor and for those shunned by society”.
Sr Jeannine co-founded New Ways Ministry – a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic ministry – in 1977 with the late Salvatorian Fr Robert Nugent.
Francis and Sr Jeannine have developed a friendly correspondence since 2021, when Francis wrote to New Ways Ministry Francis describing her as a “valiant woman.” He later sent a handwritten note congratulating her for 50 years of LGBTQ ministry.
“Meeting with Pope Francis is a great encouragement for Sr Jeannine and New Ways Ministry to continue our work in the Catholic Church,” Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, said in a statement.
Francis’ outreach is a marked departure from the criticisms and rebukes that New Ways Ministry received in previous years from Vatican officials and American bishops.
In 1999, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI who at the time directed the Vatican’s doctrinal office, ordered that Gramick and Nugent be prohibited from pastoral work with LGBTQ persons because of alleged “errors and ambiguities” in their ministry.
On 13 October, Francis also wrote a personal note to Stan “JR” Zerkowski, a gay Catholic man involved in national and local LGBTQ ministry in Kentucky.
Zerkowski told the Lexington Herald-Leader that he had written to Frances to tell him about his experiences and the challenges faced by many who work in LGBTQ ministry, and the Pope had replied two days later.
“For the Holy Father to say thank you for your ministry…it’s affirming the ministry,” said Zerkowski, who added that Francis’ approach to LGBTQ issues “opens the door, maybe, for discussions where discussions could not be had before”.
Pope Francis, the 86-year-old head of the worldwide Catholic Church, met with the Maryland-based LGBTQ+ Catholic organization New Ways Ministry at his Vatican residence on October 17. While the organization said that the 50-minute meeting “reflects the steady acceptance of Catholic officials to LGBTQ+ issues and ministry,” the pope still has a mixed record on LGBTQ+ issues.
The pope reportedly invited the group to his residence two years after the group’s co-founder, Sister Jeannine Gramick, sent a letter introducing herself and her group to the religious leader. The letter began a friendly exchange of correspondence between the two, leading the pope to call her a “valiant woman” and to congratulate her on her 50 years of LGBTQ+ ministry, New Ways Ministry wrote in a statement.
“The meeting was very emotional for me,” Gramick said. “From the day he was elected, I have loved and admired Pope Francis because of his humility, his love for the poor, and for those shunned by society. He is the human face of Jesus in our era.”
New Ways Ministry’s Executive Director Francis DeBernardo said, “This meeting was an affirmation not only of Sister Jeannine and New Ways Ministry but of the thousands upon thousands of LGBTQ+ people, parishes, schools, pastoral ministers, and religious communities who have been tirelessly working for equality, and who often experienced the great disapproval and ostracization…. Meeting with Pope Francis is a great encouragement for Sister Jeannine and New Ways Ministry to continue our work in the Catholic Church.”
In 1984, Washington, D.C. Archbishop James Hickey encouraged the group’s founders to disassociate with the group, according to The Washington Blade. In 1999, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, issued an order forbidding the group’s cofounders from doing any pastoral work with queer people. Ratzinger would later become Pope Benedict XVI and serve from 2005 until his historic resignation in 2013 due to a “lack of strength of mind and body” in his old age.
In January, he called laws criminalizing homosexuality “unjust” and insisted that God loves all his children just as they are. He also called on Catholic bishops to welcome LGBTQ+ people into the Church. In 2020, he also said that nations should recognize civil unions for same-sex couples because they “have a right to a family.”
Though Pope Francis has been praised as a progressive face for the centuries-old church, his words have revealed his slow, gradual warming toward LGBTQ+ individuals, even though official church teachings remain steadfastly anti-LGBTQ+.
— Coptic Catholic Patriarch reminds participants that ‘the guiding thread of this synod’ must be the ‘centrality of Christ’
Bishops attend the opening session of the 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican.
By Peter Jesserer Smith
The global Synod on Synodality has been two years in the making, but even as the synod’s universal stage in Rome is underway, the synod’s public discussions are revealing how this process is starting to free the church to realize the vision of a missionary church Pope Francis advanced at the very beginning of his pontificate with the publication of “Evangelii Gaudium.”
“Evangelii Gaudium” was not simply Pope Francis’ vision; the apostolic exhortation came out of Pope Benedict XVI’s 2012 Synod of Bishops on the “New Evangelization” — a term coined by his predecessor, St. John Paul II, for the church’s missionary renewal following the Second Vatican Council.
Without a doubt, the “new evangelization” has made uneven progress in the whole church. Sixty years after the Second Vatican Council, the council’s teaching, and the post-Vatican II raft of papal teachings and proposals following other synods of bishops, continue to “trickle down” — a process that leaves most of this tremendous amount of effort relegated to a shelf or the cloud rather than successfully incarnated in the life of a local church.
This first week at the synod gave a real glimpse into how Pope Francis’ effort to develop a “synodal church” — marked by communion, participation and mission — might finally unleash that evangelizing church of “missionary disciples” all walking together with Jesus Christ, who “can move forward, boldly take the initiative, go out to others, seek those who have fallen away, stand at the crossroads and welcome the outcast.”
In his Oct. 4 remarks, Coptic Catholic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sedrak, seated next to Pope Francis, reminded participants at the synod that “the guiding thread of this synod” must be the “centrality of Christ.”
“The world expects from us the witness of the risen Christ, of life and of hope,” he said, calling on them to ask for Mary’s prayers as “the only way to reach our aims is the one she herself showed us: to listen to Christ and to ‘do whatever tells you'” — a reference to the Blessed Mother’s last recorded words in John 2:5.
The testimonies given at the synod’s public portions also have revealed ways in which those who embraced this process have reaped spiritual dividends and initiatives that can be emulated all over the church.
Cardinal Grzegorz W. Rys of Lodz, Poland noted his archdiocese of 219 parishes saw 7,000 people — out of 1.3 million Catholics — meet in 300 synodal groups.
While small, the cardinal said the synod groups allowed Catholics to actually meet as persons and have an “experience of unity in a rich diversity.” He noted this included leaders of charismatic Catholic groups and also “extraordinary form” Catholics, whose spirituality is nourished by the older forms of the Roman Rite.
The cardinal, who just received the red hat during the Sept. 30 consistory, said for some people, the synodal process was the first time they spoke up and felt heard; others, however, felt it was probably the last time they were going to say anything in church and had little expectation much would come of it.
Cardinal Rys noted the fears in Poland and elsewhere about synodality, namely that it would be in opposition to the authority of the church’s hierarchy. But he related how one layperson in a synodal group told him laity are not “afraid” of the hierarchy. What they are afraid of is when clergy leave aside their formation, “when they do not listen to the Word of God, do not confess, do not really belong to any concrete community, when they escape any retreats.” This person said, “Yes, in such and only case, we are really afraid of them and their power in the church.”
The cardinal also said the experience of “broad synodality” helps address real problems of evangelization, making sure the church has “not only instruments, but even the language to evangelize.” He noted a significant “gap” exists between the language used by clergy and lay Catholics involved in the church’s work and those they mean to reach.
As an example, the cardinal referred to his experience at the 2015 Synod on the Family when someone in the synod hall “started to speak about Trinitarian inner life of God as the most important pattern for true family life.” Toward the end, one observer who had been away from the church for a long time, got up and said, “I’m sitting here with you the whole day. You stress all the time that it is the people like me you want to address. So I have to tell you that I didn’t understand a single word out of everything you have said today.”
Without broad synodality, Cardinal Rys warned, “we have no chance to bring the Gospel to the people of today, especially if you want to reach with the Gospel those who do not come to your churches — in Lodz this is 80% of (the) population.”
Following the cardinal, Mathew Thomas from the United Arab Emirates shared how the “migrant church” on the Arabian peninsula — Catholics in the apostolic vicariates of Southern Arabia and Northern Arabia — vigorously engaged the faithful in the synod process from the vicariate level to the parish level. Having 100 different nationalities of Catholics in countries all over the Arabian peninsula, they printed the prayers and synod reflection materials in different languages, and prayed for the synod daily at Masses and in families.
Thomas said they had 150,000 people — 7.5% of the Arabian peninsula’s 2 million Catholics — “directly participating in the synod, sharing their dreams, hopes, frustrations and suggestions.”
For contrast, the U.S. mustered the direct participation of just 1% of its Catholic population — 700,000 out of 67 million Catholics — in the synod process.
Thomas described how the synod process enabled new evangelization efforts, engaged teenagers more deeply in the church’s life, and brought people back into the life of the church as “the listening process was also a healing process for many.”
He noted how youth volunteers, tasked with reaching out to marginalized people for the synod, visited one alienated community again and again, until “finally they sat together and shared their feelings and opinions.” As a result, he said “now they are back in the church.”
One major commonality between the cardinal’s and the layman’s testimonies was how their local churches were continuing to deepen synodality rather than just wait for the outcome of the Vatican gathering.
The Polish cardinal revealed that as of Sept. 16, the archdiocese has begun “parochial synods in all the parishes of the diocese.”
He explained that parish pastoral councils — now established in all the parishes — will run each parish synod, prepare the questions on the community’s problems and challenges, and then the parish priest will convene the parishioners for a meeting rooted in “spiritual conversation.”
Thomas explained that the vicariates’ engagement in the synod returned to the parishes, yielding reflection and feedback from parishes on the continental synod documents and also the “Instrumentum Laboris,” the working document for the global synod.
“We have also taken steps to make corrections and improvements based on the suggestions given by the faithful during the parish synod,” he said.
As the session turned to the subject of communion, the Oct. 9 testimonies of Catholics from local churches in Asia also were illuminating — both in terms of how they sought to be agents of communion and obtain the virtues necessary for living it.
Father Clarence Davedassan of Malaysia noted that churches in Asia are small compared to the rest of the population, but “play a pivotal role in building bridges for peace, harmony, reconciliation, and even justice and freedom.”
He noted the church in Asia, to be “light and salt of the earth,” has worked to build Basic Ecclesial Communities, sometimes known as Small Christian Communities, which “bring about not only spiritual transformation but also social transformation” and show “a communion that radiates to Christians and non-Christians alike.”
Father Davedassan said they are “beacons of hope for Gospel witnessing in society” and are “a leaven of Christian life, care for the poor, and commit to transforming society through a lived Gospel experience.”
In her testimony, Siu-Wai Vanessa Cheng, a member of the Focolare movement from Hong Kong, said the Asian church has focused on reaching out to others through “four dialogues, namely that with cultures, religions, the poor and nature.”
“The synodal process begins with genuine listening, but there is no listening if there is no cultural, religious, social, economic and political awareness of the locality,” Cheng said.
Cheng also noted among Asians respect is an essential value and “necessary as we listen and dialogue, discern and decide.”
At the same time, however, she noted people have reasons for not giving their views — such as fear of making mistakes, of losing social acceptance, or being identified as problematic, disrespectful and challenging. She said the church needs to pay attention to the faithful who stay silent and take seriously the “experiences of joy and wounds and the issues raised.”
Addressing the synod’s participants Oct. 4, Pope Francis underscored that “journeying together” is the program for this synod, guided by the Holy Spirit. And to make room for the Holy Spirit, “the priority should be to listen.”
Listening to the testimonies given at the synod is opening up wider horizons for how the “new chapter of evangelization” Pope Francis described in “Evangelii Gaudium” can come alive throughout the church.
The Catholic church today is deeply polarised. This has created doctrinal fissures that are seemingly unbridgeable.
There are many rumbling contestations on questions of identity, mission, faith and morality. Other questions touch on pastoral life, the nature of marriage and family life, denial of holy communion to divorced and remarried Catholics, clerical celibacy, authority in the church and reproductive rights.
The church in Africa hasn’t been spared these issues. In parts of the continent, the challenges of ethnocentrism, abuse of religious authority and internal division are hurting the church’s credibility and effectiveness. And some national churches seem silent on rising crises of democracy and leadership across Africa.
There have always been divisions in the church, but its effectiveness and credibility in Africa have been affected by clannish divisions and internal fights over money, power and position. This raises the question: how can the church be the conscience of the continent if it’s ravaged by the same internal problems found in political institutions?
Most of the controversies that faced the church in its first 500 years were resolved through basic synodal principles – the word synod means “walking together”. These principles were developed by African scholars and church leaders like Cyprian, Athanasius, Aurelius and Augustine.
Sadly, in the process so far, there seems to be no clear African agenda articulated through African Catholic church leaders.
I have observed the preparations of Africa for this synod. I’m afraid that the mistakes made by the continent’s church leaders in previous synods – including two held specially to address Africa’s challenges in 1994 and 2010 – are being repeated.
The African continental meeting that took place in Ethiopia in March 2023 didn’t come up with a clear agenda to address the challenges facing African Catholics.
African delegates are faced with three major challenges going into the current consultations. First, they are simply responding to what is tabled in the working document for the synod rather than setting their own agenda. Second, they are treating the continent like a homogeneous entity. Third, they’re failing to demonstrate the changes that African Catholic leaders wish to make in their leadership styles, and pastoral and social ministries in local dioceses and religious congregations, without constantly looking up to Rome for instructions and directions.
Drowned voices
The latest synodal process began in 2021 with grassroots consultations, and national and continental assemblies. It has now entered the most decisive moment.
First, African delegates at the synod are not formulating their own agenda. During the two consultations on the family in 2014 and 2015, Africans framed their responses to the synod’s working document as a rejection of a western agenda for change to the traditional family. They pushed back against a perceived attempt to impose on the rest of the church a new understanding of marriage that includes the blessing of same-sex relations.
African delegates have failed to present their position on how to deal with issues of marriage, polygamy, denial of communion to polygamists, childlessness, burial rites and widowhood practices.
Second, the problems that face Africa are often localised. They require contextualised solutions. Yet, African delegates often treat the continent as homogeneous, with similar social, economic and political challenges. In the 2015 synod, Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea appealed to the delegates from Africa to speak with one voice, as if Africa had one voice.
There is a need to present Africa in its diversity and richness. The churches of Europe, for instance, have always presented their issues in a more localised, national and specific sense – the German Catholic Church is implementing its own synodal path. African delegates must resist the continued colonial structure, racialised thinking and mentality that sees Africa as one country rather than a continent of diversity and dynamic pluralism.
Finally, African delegates must move away from constantly asking Rome and the pope to help solve the issues within the church in Africa. The delegates must focus attention on the current situation of the church and society in Africa, and how African Catholics can solve their own problems by courageously confronting the internal challenges facing the church in the continent.
The Catholic church is witnessing its fastest growth in Africa (2.1% between 2019 and 2020). Out of a global population of 1.36 billion Catholics, 236 million are African (20% of the total). This growth is happening alongside a rise in poverty, social unrest, coups, wars and illiberal democracy.
What next
African delegates must demonstrate a deeper understanding of the continent’s social and religious challenges. They must capture the hopes and dreams of their congregants, and articulate how the Catholic church can support social transformation through authentic and credible religious experiences and practices.
Pope Francis has said the future of the church and the world will be determined by how those who inhabit the peripheries of life are lifted up. African delegates need to speak up for the millions of Africans who are poor and marginalised.
The Catholic church in Africa must become a champion for human rights, good governance and women’s empowerment. It needs to model the image of an inclusive church in its structures and priorities. It needs to nurture a new generation of Africans who understand the diverse challenges facing the continent and seek African solutions.
