
Voice of lay Catholics is likely to be heard in Leo XIV's church
'Every voice had equal value,' said Susan Pascoe, the business consultant, who is chair of Catholic Emergency Relief Australia. She sat at a table with the future pope for the meetings, which often stretched to 11 hours or more a day during four weeks in Rome.
Advertisement
Pope Francis dropped by to listen in, leading another meeting attendee, Wyatt Olivas, a college student from Wyoming, to refer to the pontiff as his 'bestie in Christ.'
When Leo stepped out onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica on Thursday and gave his first address as pontiff, he indicated that he would continue this practice of listening closely to many voices.
He called for a 'synodal church,' referencing the process of dialogue between church leaders and lay people that was one of Francis' signature legacies.
Francis, in seeking to democratize the church, opened summits of bishops to lay people, including women, who in 2023 were permitted to vote for the first time about what issues the church should address.
Advertisement
Francis did not want church policies to be decided only by bishops in closed rooms. He wanted to open the doors to all Catholics.
That the new pope decided to mention the concept at all in his first address was significant, said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit writer and well-known proponent of outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics. Inviting lay people to sit as equals with bishops was one of Francis' contentious moves.
'So a cardinal archbishop from an ancient diocese had to listen to a 20-year-old college student from Philadelphia, and that is quite threatening to some people,' Martin said. 'It's really important that Pope Leo has embraced that.'
Olivas, a 21-year-old Sunday school teacher and junior at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, was first invited to a meeting in Rome in 2023, when he was 19.
At first, he said, he wondered if any of the church leaders, particularly the high-ranking cardinals, would take him seriously. But as the meetings began, with strict rules of engagement requiring everyone to listen while others spoke, the appearance of hierarchy broke down.
'These cardinals who typically sit on their thrones,' Olivas said, 'for them to sit equally with a 19-year-old and listen to me' made him feel like 'we're all in this together.'
At the meetings during Francis' papacy, some divisive topics came up, including the ordination of women as Catholic deacons, the requirement of celibacy for priests and the church's attitude toward same-sex couples. Francis requested that various study groups examine some of the more difficult issues and compile reports, in effect postponing decisions about whether to change church teachings or church law.
Advertisement
Progressives who had high hopes that these listening sessions might lead to tangible shifts in church policy worry that the new pope will continue along a path of 'a lot of talk and very little action,' said Miriam Duignan, executive director of the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research.
Some conservatives say progressives hijacked the meetings as a way to push their liberal agenda. 'Synodality for some people is an ideology,' said Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a conservative cardinal from Germany.
Supporters of the process say that simply bringing lay people into discussions with church leaders enhances a transparency that the church has previously lacked.
'If you look at a country like Australia, which had a five-year inquiry into sexual abuse, the notion of a culture of clericalism was part of the analysis of what needed to be addressed,' Pascoe said. For too long, she said, the church was organized around a structure where 'all authority was vested in one individual of the priest or bishop.'
By forcing church leaders to talk seriously with lay people, she said, the consultations inaugurated by Francis tried to introduce a 'responsible approach to living and being in the church.'
For Leo, who worked as a missionary and parish priest in Peru, listening to and living among lay people has long been a key tenet of his leadership style.
In Peru, he served as bishop of a rural diocese and was 'living with them, not in a palace but in a simple house,' said the Rev. Gilles Routhier, a professor of theology at Laval University in Quebec and an adviser to the Vatican meetings convened by Francis.
Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Bamenda, Cameroon, who also sat at the same table as the future Pope Leo during the meetings in 2024, said the man who is now pontiff took the sessions very seriously even though he occasionally had to dash out to deal with his day job running the Vatican office that selects and manages bishops globally.
Advertisement
'You could see he appreciated the contribution of everyone, and he also came across as a very good listener,' Nkea Fuanya said.
In a conversation recorded last year at a church in Illinois, when he was still a cardinal, the man who is now Pope Leo explained how Francis was 'looking for a way to help people understand that the church is not Father up here on Sunday with a lot of spectators.'
He added, 'It does not take away at all the authority, if you will, or the ministry of those who are called to specific services in the church, such as a bishop or a priest. But it does call the best gifts out of each and every one to bring them together.'
It is not yet clear whether Leo will encourage the consultative groups to continue talking about the most sensitive issues facing the church. But those who have participated in the process say it would be hard for him to completely squash those discussions.
Martin said that those who had specific pet issues needed to understand that the process was more about 'changing the methods by which we would be able to move ahead with some of these issues.'
He added that some of the most commonly raised topics by certain Catholics did not necessarily resonate with the faithful the world over.
Advertisement
'We also heard from people who were much more concerned about migrants and refugees, about poverty, about living in countries where Catholics are minorities' than about ordaining women or supporting the desires of divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion, Martin said.
'Those are a certain constellation of concerns,' he added. The new pope, he said, 'really has to take a much more universal view of the church.'
This article originally appeared in
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
The Oct. 7 terrorists have names. Make them public.
Patrick Desbois is a Catholic priest and founder and president of Yahad-In Unum, an organization dedicated to investigating targeted mass killings, including those of Jews and Roma during World War II, Mayans during Guatemala's civil war, and Yazidis during the ascendancy of the Islamic State. Who murdered Kfir Bibas? Who tortured Edan Alexander? Who raped Amit Soussana?
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
NY state Senate approves doctor-assisted suicide bill, sends it to Hochul's desk for approval
ALBANY – State Senate Democrats passed highly controversial legislation that would allow terminally ill people to take their own lives with the help of doctors in a razor-thin vote Monday — leaving it up to Gov. Kathy Hochul whether to sign it into law. 'This is one of the great social reforms of our state,' state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D-Manhattan), the bill's sponsor in the upper chamber, touted at a press conference earlier in the day Monday — putting the measure on the same tier as the legalization of gay marriage. 'This is about personal autonomy, this is about liberty, this is about exercising one's own freedom to control one's body,' Hoylman-Sigal continued. The measure passed 35 to 27, with six Democrats – Senators April Baskin, Siela Bynoe, Cordelle Cleare, Monica Martinez, Roxanne Persaud, and Sam Sutton – voting against it. 'The governor will review the legislation,' a spokesperson for Hochul said. The bill's passage follows a years-long campaign that was fought tooth and nail by a diverse group of critics, including disability rights activists and the Catholic church, as well as many black and Orthodox Jewish communities. 'The Governor still has the opportunity to uphold New York's commitment to suicide prevention, protect vulnerable communities, and affirm that every life—regardless of disability, age, or diagnosis—is worthy of care, dignity, and protection,' The New York Alliance Against Assisted Suicide wrote in a statement following the vote. A Catholic group slammed the bill's passing as 'a dark day for New York' and also called on Hochul to refuse to sign it. 'For the first time in its history, New York is on the verge of authorizing doctors to help their patients commit suicide. Make no mistake – this is only the beginning, and the only person standing between New York and the assisted suicide nightmare unfolding in Canada is Governor Hochul,' Dennis Poust, Executive Director of the New York State Catholic Conference, wrote in a statement. Ahead of the vote, the nearly three-hour debate on the Senate floor got emotional, with several lawmakers holding back tears as they explained their votes. Syracuse-area state Sen. Rachel May (D-Onondaga) shared the story of her late husband, who was receiving morphine in the final stages of his battle with cancer, which he eventually succumbed to at 32 years old. 'I don't know if the last largest dose he took also took his life, but I know that he died in peace,' May said. 'It isn't about controlling the disease or controlling the pain, it's about having control at the end of your life,' she said before voting in favor. Critics fear the legislation lacks critical safeguards over how doctors approve patients looking to receive the prescription for a lethal cocktail of drugs, such as a statutory waiting period, establishing clear chain of custody for the pills, mandating the doctor and recipient meet in-person, and requiring a disclosure that someone indeed used the drugs to take their own life. Under the bill, recipients would need approval from two doctors and a sign-off from two independent witnesses, after which they would receive a prescription for drugs they could use to take their life at a time of their choosing. Doctors also do not have to conduct a mental health screening for each patient, but may refer a patient for one under the legislation. 'I don't think requesting end-of-life medication when an individual is suffering and in pain and dying suggests a mental health condition, if anything, I think it's quite rational,' Hoylman-Sigal said. Hoylman vowed the bill would not lead to such 'unintended consequences.' 'It was a professional organization that provided us crucial guidance, that helped us develop the state-of-the-art safeguards in this legislation that gave my colleagues and the general public, I believe, the assurance that there will not be unintended consequences,' he said. The legislation is referred to by its supporters as the 'Medical Aid in Dying' bill. 'The option of medical aid in dying provides comfort, allowing those who are dying to live their time more fully and peacefully until the end. I am profoundly grateful to Senate Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins for giving her conference the space to have this important and emotional discussion,' Corinne Carey, Senior Campaign Director of Compassion and Choices, the main group driving the effort to pass the bill, wrote in a statement.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Women who survived Spain's Franco-era centres disrupt Catholic apology
By Emma Pinedo and Silvio Castellanos MADRID (Reuters) -Spanish women who were forced into rehabilitation centres during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco broke up a Catholic meeting held to offer them a apology and demanded more concrete reparation from the church and state. Protesters - including survivors in their 60s and 70s, activists and relatives - held up banners marked "No" during the event on Monday night, threw the signs into the audience and forced organisers to suspend the meeting. Thousands of girls and young women who were accused of perceived moral failings - from pregnancies outside marriage to left-wing activism - were put into state-run Catholic rehabilitation institutions for periods during Franco's rule, from the 1940s up to a decade after his death into the 1980s. A Catholic body that includes most of the communities of nuns that helped operate some of the centres held a ceremony to ask the women for forgiveness in the Pablo VI Foundation auditorium in Madrid, the first event of its kind in Spain. The President of the Spanish Confederation of Religious Entities (CONFER) read out an apology then invited survivors to come to the stage as a video of them describing their experiences was shown. After the film, which was often drowned out by cheers and cries of "Yes, we can", people in the crowd jumped to their feet and started shouting "truth, justice and reparation," and "neither forget nor forgive". CONFER officials turned on the lights, abruptly ended the event and later said they may issue a statement in response on Tuesday. The confrontation underlined the depth of feeling over the Patronato de Proteccion a la Mujer (Board for the Protection of Women) institutes - part of the legacy of Franco's rule that is still haunting Spain almost 50 years after his death in November 1975. 'ACT OF JUSTICE' Campaigners, including individual survivors and organisations such as the Banished Daughters of Eve, are demanding a response from the state, along the lines of Ireland's 2013 apology and reparations for the abuses in its Magdalene Laundries. Some are also asking for financial compensation to cover costs, including psychological support, and the work that they say they were made to do without pay in the centres. At the event, before it was disrupted, CONFER chairman Jesus Diaz Sariego described the statement as one step towards a broader process of recognition and that the organisation would collaborate in the search for the truth. "We are here to do what we consider necessary and right: to ask for forgiveness ... because this act is not just a formality, but a necessary act of justice. It is an exercise in historical and moral responsibility," he said. After the event, Consuelo Garcia del Cid, 66, a survivor, dismissed that apology as a "facelift" and accused CONFER of removing some of the recorded testimonies and stopping women talking about babies that campaigners say were taken from unwed mothers at the centres. Garcia del Cid, who championed the cause with several books and founded Banished Daughters of Eve, had earlier told the audience the Spanish government owed them, particularly for the 10 years the boards were kept running after Franco. Spain's Democratic Memory Ministry - set up to tackle the legacy of Spain's civil war and Franco's regime - said last week it applauded CONFER's action and planned to hold its own ceremony later this year. It declined to comment further on Monday. Equality minister Ana Redondo attended the event but did not make any comment.