Lay Catholics Expected to Retain Big Role in Pope Leo XIV’s Church

In the fall of 2024, the cardinal who is now the Pope Leo XIV sat on a large round table within the Vatican, discussing the challenges facing the Roman Catholic Church with a cardinal of Ethiopia, Archbishops of Cameroon and Kenya, a cardinal published in Mongolia and Bishops of Texas and Liberia.

Joining them at the table there was a Catholic podcaster of Dallas; A business consultant from Melbourne, Australia; A Fiji University Administrator; And a parishioner from Myanmar, three of whom were women.

Each person at the table, cleric or Lyperson was allowed three minutes of uninterrupted speech.

“Each voice had the same value,” said Susan Pascoe, business consultant, president of Catholic Emergency Relief Australia. He sat at a table with the future Pope for meetings, which extended to 11 hours or more per day of four weeks in Rome.

Pope Francis went on to listen, leading another assistant to the meeting, Wyatt Olivas, a Wyoming university student, to refer to the Pontiff as his “best friend in Christ.”

Every time Pope Leo XIV went to the balcony of the Basilica of San Pedro on Thorsday’s day and gave his first direction as a pontiff, he indicated that he would continue this practice of listening carefully to many voices.

He asked for a “Synodal Church”, which refers to the process of dialogue between the church leaders and the laity who was one of Pope Francis’s exclusive legacies.

Francis, when trying to democratize the church, opened bishops to the laity, including women, who in 2023 were allowed to vote for the first time on what problems the Church should address.

Francis did not want church policies to be determined only by bishops in closed rooms. I wanted to open the doors to all Catholics.

That the new Pope decided to mention the concept in his first speech was significant, said Reverend James Martin, a Jesuit writer and a well -known proponent or dissemination to LGBTQ Catholics. Inviting the laity to sit as the same with the bishops was one of Pope Francis’s controversial movements.

“Then, a cardinal archbishop of an ancient diocese had to listen to a 20 -year -old university student of Philadelphia, and that is quite threatening for some people,” said Father Martin. “It is really important that Pope Leo has accepted that.”

Mr. Olivas, a 21 -year -old Sunday school teacher at Wyoming University in Laramie, was first invited to a meeting in Rome in 2023, when he was 19 years old.

At first, he said, miraculously if church leaders, particularly high -ranking cardinals, would take it seriously. But as the meetings, with strict compromise rules that require everyone to listen while Thers spoke, the appearance of the hierarchy broke.

“These cardinals who generally sit in their thrones,” said Olivas, “so that they feel equally with a 19 -year -old and listen to me” they made him feel “we are all together in this.”

In the duration of Francis’s papacy, some divisive issues emerged, including the ordering of women as a Catholic deacon, the celibacy requirement for priests and the attitude of the church towards same -sex couples. Francis requested that several study groups examine some of the most difficult problems and compile reports, in effect, postponing decisions on whether to change the teachings of the Church or the law of the Church.

The progressives who had great hope that the thesis listening sessions could lead to tangible changes in the Church’s policy.

Some conservatives say that the progressives kidnapped meetings as a way of promoting their liberal agenda. “Sinodality for some people is an ideology,” said Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a conservative cardinal from Germany.

The supporters of the process say that simply put the laity in discussions with the church leaders improve a transparency that the Church has previously lacked.

“If you look at a country like Australia, who had a five -year investigation into sexual abuse, the notion of a culture of clericalism was part of what should be addressed,” said Pascoe. For too long, he said, the Church was organized around a structure where “the entire authority was in an individual from the priest or bishop.”

By forcing the church leaders to speak seriously with the lay people, he said, the consultations inaugurated by Francis tried to introduce a “responsible approach to live and be in the church.”

For Pope Leo XIV, who worked as a missionary and pastor in Peru, listening and living among the laity has long been ten key or his leadership style.

In Peru, he served as a bishop of a rural diocese and was “living with them, not in a palace but in a simple house,” said Reverend Gilles Routhier, professor of theology at the University of Laval in Quebec and advisor to the convents of the meetings of the Vatican of Francis.

Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya de Bamenda, Cameroon, who also sat at the same table as the future Pope Leo during meetings in 2024, said that the man who is now a pontiff took the sessions very seriously despite the fact that he occasionally had to face to deal with his daily work with the Vatican office that selects and manages Bishops globally.

“You could see that it appreciated everyone’s contribution, and it was also a very good listener,” said Archbishop Nkea Fuanya.

In a conversation recorded last year in 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 a father here in Sunay with many spectators.”

He added: “The entire authority is not removed, if you wish, or the ministry of those who are called to specific services in the Church, such a bishop or a priest.

It is not still clear if Pope Leo will encourage advisory groups to continue talking about the most delicate problems faced by the Church. But those who have participated in the process say it would be difficult for him to complete those discussions.

Father Martin said that those who had specific pet problems needed to understand that the process was more about “changing the methods by which we could advance with some of the problems.”

He added that some of the most commonly high issues by certain Catholics did not necessarily resonate with the faithful of the world.

“We also listen to people who were much more concerned with migrants and refugees, poverty, about living in countries where Catholics are minorities” than ordering women or supporting the wishes of divorced and cold married.

“Those are a certain constellation of groups,” he added. The new Pope, he said, “really has to have a much more universal vision of the Church.”

Josephine de la Bruyère Reports contributed from Rome.