SYNODAL CHURCH: CONSTITUTIVELY WEAVING THE FUTURE THROUGH NEW AND TRANSFORMATIVE NARRATIVES AND RELATIONSHIPS
In a world marked by a disconcerting civilizational, planetary and technological crisis, the Church is called to rediscover its deepest identity as a people of God journeying together. Synodality constitutes, according to the emerging theological understanding of recent magisterial teaching, a constitutive dimension of the Church itself. As Pope Francis affirmed, “the path of synodality is the path God expects of the Church of the third millennium.”
This symposium wishes to situate itself precisely within that horizon: to understand synodality not only as a structure of participation, but as a new way of inhabiting relationships, discerning reality, and narrating the present and the future. The synodal Church is called to generate new narratives capable of overcoming languages of exclusion, self-referentiality, and clerical power, in order to open spaces of listening, co-responsibility, and encounter. In times of profound cultural mutations, the evangelizing mission demands a narrative conversion: moving from apologies for the indefensible toward generative narratives and dialogues of hope, fraternity/sorority, and human dignity.
Synodality implies a profound conversion of ecclesial relationships and of the concrete forms of exercising communion-participation-mission. From this perspective, proper to the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, authority ceases to be conceived primarily as domination or the concentration of power, and comes to be understood as a ministry of service, listening, discernment, and community animation within the People of God. Synodality thus configures a profoundly relational ecclesiology, in which the diversity of ministries, cultures, experiences, and charisms does not represent a threat to unity but a constitutive richness that enables the community discernment of God’s will in history. Within this horizon, ecclesial consensus—as a mature expression of the sensus fidei fidelium—becomes the privileged locus where the action of the Spirit is manifested, and where the Church recognizes, in communion, the most concrete and real dimension of its infallibility in believing.
“Constitutively weaving the future” means recognizing that the future of the Church and of humanity cannot be built through isolation or vertical models of decision-making, but through shared processes of participation, mutual care, and spiritual discernment. The image of weaving expresses a spirituality of interdependence: every voice, every culture, every periphery, and every human experience contributes indispensable threads to the construction of a truly evangelical and universal community.
This symposium wishes to offer an interdisciplinary space for theological, pastoral, social, and spiritual reflection where academics, pastoral agents, ecclesial leaders, and members of diverse communities can dialogue about the challenges and possibilities of a constitutively synodal Church. We seek to explore concrete paths for building new and transformative relationships capable of healing historical wounds, promoting cultures of peace, and strengthening a more participatory, inclusive, prophetic Church, close to the poor.
Ultimately, this gathering wishes to be an invitation to reimagine together the Church of the future: a Church that listens before speaking, that discerns before imposing, and that walks with humanity as a sign and sacrament of communion, hope, and universal fraternity.
