Catholicone is expected to maintain a big role in the Pope Liu Fourteen Church

In the fall of 2024, the Cardinal, who is now Pope Liu, the fourteenth, sat on a large round table inside the Vatican, discussed Challenges Which is facing the Roman Catholic Church with Cardinal from Ethiopia, the head of the bishops from Cameroon and Kenya, and Cardinal was published in Mongolia, and bishops from Texas and Liberia.

Join them on the table was Catholic from Dallas. Business Adviser from Melbourne, Australia; University Director from Fi; And the diocese of Myanmar, three of them are women.

Each person has been allowed on the table, clerics, or the average person for three minutes of speaking without interruption.

“Every voice had equal value,” said Susan Basco, business advisor, head of the Catholic Emergency Field in Australia. I sat on a table with the future Pope of meetings, which often spanned 11 hours or more per day in four weeks in Rome.

Pope Francis fell to listen to him, where he led another present, White Olivas, a university student from Wyoming, to refer to the ink as “the best in Christ.”

When Pope Liu fourteen went out to the balcony The first title in the name of the PopeHe pointed out that he will continue this practice of listening closely to many votes.

He called for the “Senodal Church”, referring to Dialogue process Among the leaders of the church and the ordinary people who were one of Pope Francis Heritage signing.

Francis, in the pursuit of the democratic character of the Church, opened the bishops’ summaries to the situation of people, including women, who were in 2023 were in 2023 Allow the vote for the first time On the issues that the church must address.

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

Priest James Martin, Jesuit writer and A well -known supporter to communicate To LGBTQ Catholics. The invitation of ordinary people to sit with the bishops was one of the controversial Pope Francis movements.

Father Martin said: “Therefore, the head of the Cardinal Bishop of ancient Parachidi had to listen to a 20 -year -old university student from Philadelphia, and this threatens some people.” “It is really important for Pope Liu to adopt it.”

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

Initially, he said, he wondered whether any of the church leaders, especially high -level Cardinals, would take it seriously. But with the start of the meetings, with the strict engagement rules that require everyone to listen while others spoke, the emergence of the hierarchical sequence.

Mr. Olivas said: “These Cardinals who usually sit on their thrones,” For them to sit on an equal footing with a 19 -year -old child and listen to me, “They made him feel that” we are all together together. “

At meetings during the papal of Francis, some divisional issues appeared, including coordination of women such as Catholic deacons, the condition of celibacy on the priests and the church’s position towards husbands of the same sex. Francis asked different study groups to study some of the most difficult issues and assembly reports, in fact postponing decisions on whether the teachings of the Church or Church law will be changed.

Myriam Dogan, CEO of the Wijngaards Institute of Catholic Research, said that progressive people who have great hopes that these listening sessions will lead to concrete transformations in the church policy that the new Pope will continue along the path of “a lot of talk and very little work.”

Some conservatives say that the progressors kidnapped the meetings as a way to push their liberal agenda. “The Synod for some people is an ideology,” said Gerhard Ludwig Muller, conservative Cardinal from Germany.

Supporters of the operation say that simply bringing ordinary people in discussions with the church leaders enhances the transparency that the church had lacked before.

“If you look at a country like Australia, which was it A five -year investigation of sexual assault“The idea of ​​verbal culture was part of the analysis of what to address,” said Ms. Passco.

She said that by forcing the church leaders to speak seriously with ordinary people, the consultations that Francis opened attempted to present “a responsible approach to live and exist in the church.”

For the fourteenth Pope Liu, who worked as a missionary and parish priest in Peru, listening and living among ordinary people has long been a major principle in his leadership style.

In Peru, he held the position of a rural diocese bishop and was “living with them, not in a palace but in a simple house,” said Reverend Jil Rothy, Professor of Theology at Laval University in Quebec and a consultant for the Vatican meetings held by Francis.

Archbishop Andrew Nkia Vuwaiana of Padda, Cameroon, who also sat at the table of the same Pope Liu in the future during the meetings in 2024, said that the man who is now Pontif took the sessions seriously although he sometimes had to deal with his daily function that runs the Vatican office who chooses and defends bishops worldwide.

“You can see that everyone can contribute, and he also encountered as a very good listener,” said bishops’ head of Nkia Vuwaiana.

in Recorded conversation last year In a church in Illinois, when he was still Cardinal, the man who is now Pope Liu explained how Francis was “looking for a way to help people understand that the church is not a father here on Sunday with many spectators.”

He added: “It does not take away power at all, if you will, or the Ministry of those who are called to specific services in the church, such as the bishop or the priest. But it calls the best gifts from each one to collect them.”

It is not yet clear whether Pope Liu will encourage consulting groups to continue to talk about the most sensitive issues facing the church. But those who participated in this process say it will be difficult for him to fully crush these discussions.

Father Martin said that those who have specific pets need to understand that the process was more about “changing the methods that we will be able to move forward in some of these issues.”

He added that some of the most common topics by some Catholics have not necessarily resonated with believers all over the world.

Father Martin said: “We also heard of people who were more anxious about immigrants and refugees, about poverty, about living in countries where Catholics are minorities,” more than women arranged or support the desires of divorced Catholics and marry them to receive the company.

“This is a certain constellation of fears,” he added. He said that the new Pope “must take a much more universal view of the church.”

Josephine de la Broeier She contributed to the reports from Rome.