Pope Francis to Italian Catholic Action 30.04.2021

The Church of dialogue is a synodal Church,

listening together to the Spirit and to the voice of God that reaches us through the cry of the poor and the earth. Generally speaking, sinners are also the poor of the
earth. In fact, the synod is not so much a plan to be planned and implemented, a pastoral decision to be taken, but first and foremost a style to be incarnated.

In this sense, your Association is a “gymnasium” of synodality,

and your attitude has been and can continue to be an important resource for the Italian Church, which is questioning itself on how to develop this style
at all levels. Dialogue, discussion, research, but with the Holy Spirit.
Your most valuable contribution will once again come from your laity, which is an antidote to selfreferentiality. It is curious: when one does not live true laity in the Church, one falls into self-referentiality.

Making a synod is not looking in the mirror,

nor is looking at the diocese or the bishops’ conference, no, it is not that. It is walking together following the Lord and towards the people, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Laity is also an antidote to abstractness: a synodal path must lead to choices. And these choices, if they are to be practicable, must start from reality, not from the three or four ideas that are fashionable or
that have come up in the discussion. Not to leave reality as it is, obviously not, but to try to influence it, to make it grow in the line of the Holy Spirit, to transform it according to the project of the Kingdom of God.