Documents from the Vatican will not determine the future of the Church under the Tatras. The Pope himself sets an example of how to proceed..
What will happen to the synodality / As Leo XIV he grasped the biggest project of his predecessor.
Pope Leo XIV on Saturday, September 20, 2025.
It has been a few years since the Catholic Church addressed synodality, Pope Francis’s most significant project. While some have been enthusiastic about him from the beginning, others remain sceptical, and some are warning critically against losing their Catholic identity.
With the death of the Argentine Pope, this journey did not end. Francis managed to approve the beginning of a new stage of the synodal process in March of this year, which will culminate in 2028 with a church-wide gathering in the Vatican.
Thus, the final or implementation phase of the project occurs. Instructions for local churches come from the Vatican; they appoint synodal teams for this phase, and the period is expected to conclude within three years at the assembly, as mentioned earlier. Well, is this whole effort supposed to have a dot? Isn’t it more about changing the settings in some areas?
‘Synodality is an attitude of openness and a willingness to understand. In relation to the Church, this means that every member has a voice and a role to fulfil through prayer and reflection,” said Leo XIV.
‘I think it’s an attitude that has something to say to the world today,’ he continued. “A moment ago, we talked about polarisation. I believe that sodality can act as a remedy. It’s a way of addressing some of the biggest challenges we face.”
The Pope also addressed those who are sceptical or opposed to the project.
‘Sometimes bishops or priests may feel that synodality is taking away their authority,’ he said, adding that this is not the case, and suggesting that their perception of authority is distorted..
The Pope placed the idea of synodality in a deeper context when he said that „this process began long before the last synod, at least in Latin America“. He also connected this idea with the Second Vatican Council.
„ I think synodality offers the Church a great opportunity to participate in the world,’ he said. ‘Since the time of the Second Vatican Council, I think this has been very important, but there is still a lot to do.’
A key part of the discussion focuses on what the realisation of an idea should look like in the life of the Church.
Leo XIV. He indicated that the implementation of synodality may not exclusively resemble the recent Synod on Synodality, which employed round tables and the so-called ‘interviews in Ghost’. However, according to Leo XIV, ‘there are many ways to achieve this through dialogue and mutual respect’.
He went on to say that synodality is a way of expressing how the Church should be organised; we should strive to be a community. In other words, we should be a church whose primary focus is not institutional hierarchy, but the idea that we are all part of the same church and that everyone — whether priests, women, bishops, missionaries or families — has a specific vocation and something to contribute. Together, we are looking for ways to grow and develop as a church.
This is part of the Pope’s conversation with Vaticanist Allen about synodality..
