February 8th Essay: Walking Together: An Eyewitness Account of Pope Francis’s Legacy of Synodality and the Renewal and Reform of the Church

I am convinced that synodality is Pope Francis’s abiding gift to the church. His energetic mission to school the church in the art and practice of synodality in the final few years of his life fittingly defines his pontificate, even though the ensuing synodal process did not receive universal approval.

Synodality presents opportunities for the renewal and reform of the church, beginning with creating a shared space for listening, dialogue, and discernment. This synodal process is considered threatening by some critics and doubters, in part because of a fear of loss of authority by some priests and bishops. Synodality calls us to convert and reform a clericalist obsession with and exercise of power and authority in the church. The effort to heal this distorted form of authority in the church stands as a bold and enduring manifestation of Pope Francis’s synodal vision.

Synodality is Francis’s way to foster participation in mission by welcoming the gifts, talents, and wisdom that the Spirit generously bestows on the entire community, through the grace of baptism. In the synodal vision of Pope Francis, participation in mission is an expression of our faith in God.

Francis demonstrated by his words, deeds, and gestures that in a synodal church, people who disagree do not have to become enemies, because it isn’t a zero-sum game of winners and losers. Differences, disagreements, and competing visions of synodality exist and are part of the synodal tradition. As such, synodality isn’t easy. We make the way by walking in a transparent, inclusive, and sustained process of discernment in common. We do not determine the answers ahead of the process, nor exclude anyone from the ‘way’.

Discernment is a mark of the church that Pope Francis encouraged us to co-create, so that, as a church, we can build our capacity to listen with openness and honesty and to speak with courage and charity. This process calls for co-responsibility in governance and the inclusion of lay people in consequential decisions. In a synodal church, lay women and lay men have a right to be listened to and that right is warranted by our shared baptismal grace as equal members of the body of Christ. (See Final Document, no. 60).

Synodality is not a task to be completed but a spirit to be incarnated and lived, a habitual way of life. The process is as important as its outcome. As such, it offers a chance for ecclesial renewal and conversion. Beyond the diatribes, controversies, and divisions, the fundamental question remains how to synod (verb); how do we walk well together as the People of God?

The gift of synodality to the church can be further thought of as a catalyst for renewal and reform of the church, first, because it reconfigures the mission-framework of the church, so that every baptized Christian carries the duty and responsibility of mission and, second, it helps the church become constitutively synodal, that is, a church which makes a preferential option to continuously engage in inclusive listening, dialogue, and discernment, as expressions of its ordinary ways of living, working, teaching, and ministering.

Finally, as envisaged by Pope Francis, synodality invites us to recognize the equal dignity of women members of the People of God, their indispensable role and ministry, and the necessity of a continued discernment of women’s diaconate. Listening to women’s voices, honoring their talents, celebrating their competence, and learning from them about being a synodal church in mission ultimately make us a better Church.

Pope Francis’s prophetic vision of a synodal church aimed to promote an understanding and practice characterized by inclusive decision-making, participatory discernment, and co-responsibility in ministry, as habitual ways of fulfilling its mission. Continuing this rich legacy is the task of the church for the rest of the Third Millennium.

— Fr. A. E. Orobator, S.J., Dean of the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in California