Why should the next Pope call the Church to resume his mission?

Inspired by the best of Francisco’s papacy, our next Pope must be a pontiff of the Gospel joy More than one of the synodality.

Have you ever spent a whole day at home, without daring to leave, distracted by unwashed clothes and feeling increasingly locked up?

It is a recipe for anxiety, which creates the feeling of locking itself, but without any place to go. People and communities prosper when their mission comes out and live; They stagnate when they locate themselves.

The next Pope must call the entire Catholic Church to resume his sense of having a mission, of having been sent, of the need to leave. Our mission as a church is fundamentally determined by the martyriathe leitourgia and the deacon: Testimony of the revelation of Christ as transmitted in writing and tradition, offer cult and encourage contemplation, and live at the service of the poor and marginalized. We must be a missionary church, a church that does not enclose itself, but is projected towards God and neighbor.

The Church, as it has always been, is marked by tensions: between dynamism and lethargy, unity and division, growth and crisis. The Pope’s task is, as far as possible, to promote and promote the positive aspects of the Church in its time, counteracting the negatives at the same time. The best way to achieve this is to always focus on its mission of being the “universal sacrament of salvation.”

The next Pope must call us this. The Church is less dynamic when it is shaped by its own intracelesial disputes and, therefore, does not manifest itself as a sacrament. It is more dynamic when he lives his triple task of testimony, prayer and service, and therefore is a sacramental sign of Christ.

Living this must be a task of all Catholics, who are, in the words of Cardinal Gerhard Müller, “Citizens correspondable in the city of God.” The Pope’s task is to promote the global church to live this mission.

In many ways, Francisco’s papacy tensions date back to the division between being a church Gospel joy and be a synodal church. While both have their complexities, the first focused on a church that lives its dynamic mission. We can observe this on the numerous occasions when Pope Francis requested and offered prayer, his call to proclaim with joy the gospel and his constant emphasis on serving the poor and marginalized. Sinodality, although it was supposed to serve this end, too often felt like an endless meeting of the Pastoral Council on how to be a pastoral advice. Inspired by Francisco’s papacy, our next Pope must be a Pope Gospel joy More than a Synodal Pope.

The Pope cannot make us evangelical, devotees and charitable, but he can summon these actions and act as a source of unity. I think that the next Pope can achieve this better by adopting what I would call the traditionalism of the Vatican II – which was what fundamentally molded the papados of John Paul II and Benedict XVI – and promoting initiatives such as Word On Fire, the Missionaries Focus, the Catholic study programs and the dynamic and growing church in Africa. This traditionalism of the Vatican II has no interest in a church-fortress, but neither in capitulating before the world. Rather, as a sacrament, the Catholic Church must seek the encounter with the world and transform it.

The next Pope – in words, works and fidelity to tradition – must call us to approach God in cult and sacraments, believers and non -believers in the teaching of all faith, and the smallest and forgotten in the service.

We cannot be locked in our ecclesial disputes. The Pope needs to open the church doors so that its members can live more fully our testimony, our cult and our service.

Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in NCRegister.