In St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Leo XIV celebrated the Jubilee of the synodal teams and participation bodies with a homily centered on communion and “walking together.” He invited the faithful to overcome “the logics of power” and to rediscover “those of love,” affirming that “no one is called to command, all are called to serve.”

The Pontiff described synodality as a visible sign of the union between God and men, recalling that participation structures must reflect fraternity and service. But his reflection exposed a growing distance between the synodal discourse and the real life of the Church.

A theology with troubling omissions

Although the homily maintains a formally solid theology, it avoids mentioning an essential point: truth is not sought from scratch, but has already been revealed in the Gospel and transmitted by Tradition. By stating that “no one possesses the whole truth, we must all seek it with humility, and together,” the message omits that this truth already has a face and a word: Christ himself, alive in the faith of the Church.

That omission is not trivial. If the search for truth is detached from its anchor in Revelation, synodality runs the risk of appearing as a consensus process, closer to relativism than to Christian discernment. True humility does not consist in reinventing what has already been given, but in receiving it with fidelity.

A self-enclosed synodalism

Beyond the doctrinal plane, the homily overlooks another reality: the synodal teams have not reached the parishes or the youth. In many places, they have become administrative circles dependent on the curias, distant from the concrete life of the faithful. Much is said about “listening,” but that listening seems always directed to the same interlocutors, ignoring a youth that, far from fleeing, rediscovers faith through liturgy and tradition.

The result is a Church that runs the risk of confusing openness with dispersion, dialogue with indecision. Leo XIV’s homily reflects good intention and pastoral sensitivity, but reveals an idealized vision, more focused on procedures than on the inner fire of faith.

Full text of Pope Leo XIV’s homily

JUBILEE OF THE SYNODAL TEAMS AND PARTICIPATION BODIES

HOLY MASS – HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER LEO XIV

St. Peter’s Basilica
XXX Sunday of Ordinary Time, October 26, 2025

Brothers and sisters:

In celebrating the Jubilee of the synodal teams and participation bodies, we are invited to contemplate and rediscover the mystery of the Church, which is not a simple religious institution nor does it identify with hierarchies or their structures. The Church, on the other hand, as Vatican II has reminded us, is the visible sign of the union between God and men, of his project to gather us all into a single family of brothers and sisters and to make of us his people, a people of beloved children, all united in the one embrace of his love.

Looking at the mystery of ecclesial communion, generated and guarded by the Holy Spirit, we can also understand the meaning of the synodal teams and participation bodies. These structures express what happens in the Church, where relationships do not respond to the logics of power but to those of love. The former—for the Pope Francis has constantly admonished—are “worldly” logics, while in the Christian community the primacy pertains to spiritual life, which makes us discover that we are all children of God, brothers to one another, called to serve one another.

The supreme rule in the Church is love. No one is called to command, all are called to serve; no one should impose their own ideas, all must listen to each other reciprocally; without excluding anyone, we are all called to participate; no one possesses the whole truth, we must all seek it with humility, and together.

Precisely the word “together” expresses the call to communion in the Church. Pope Francis has also reminded us of this in his latest Lenten Message: “The vocation of the Church is to walk together, to be synodal. Christians are called to journey together, never as solitary travelers. The Holy Spirit impels us to come out of ourselves to go toward God and toward our brothers and sisters, and never to enclose ourselves in ourselves. Walking together means being artisans of unity, starting from the common dignity of children of God” (Lenten Message, February 25, 2025).

Walking together. Apparently, this is what the two characters in the parable we have just heard in the Gospel do. The Pharisee and the tax collector both go up to the temple to pray, we could say they “go up together” or in any case they meet together in the sacred place; and yet, they are divided and there is no communication between them. Both travel the same path, but their walking is not walking together; both are in the temple, but one occupies the first place and the other, the last; both pray to the Father, but without being brothers and without sharing anything.

This depends above all on the attitude of the Pharisee. His prayer, apparently directed to God, is only a mirror in which he looks at himself, justifies himself, and praises himself. He “went up to pray, but did not want to pray to God, but to praise himself” (St. Augustine, Sermon 115,2), feeling better than the other, judging him with contempt and looking at him with disdain. He is obsessed with his ego and, in that way, ends up revolving around himself without having a relationship with either God or others.

Brothers and sisters, this can also happen in the Christian community. It happens when the I prevails over the we, generating personalisms that prevent authentic and fraternal relationships; when the pretension of being better than others, as the Pharisee does with the tax collector, creates division and transforms the community into a critical and exclusive place; when one takes advantage of one’s position to exercise power and occupy spaces.

It is the tax collector, on the other hand, whom we must look to. With his same humility, also in the Church we must all recognize ourselves as needy of God and needy of one another, exercising mutual love, reciprocal listening, the joy of walking together, knowing that “Christ is with those who are humble of heart and not with those who exalt themselves above the flock” (St. Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, ch. XVI).

The synodal teams and participation bodies are an image of that Church that lives in communion. And today I would like to invite you to help us, in listening to the Spirit, in dialogue, in fraternity and in parrhesia, to understand that, in the Church, before any difference, we are called to walk together in search of God, to clothe ourselves with the sentiments of Christ; help us to widen the ecclesial space so that it may be collegial and welcoming.

This will help us to face with confidence and renewed spirit the tensions that traverse the life of the Church—between unity and diversity, tradition and novelty, authority and participation—, letting the Spirit transform them, so that they do not become ideological oppositions and harmful polarizations. It is not a matter of resolving them by reducing some to others, but of letting them be fecundated by the Spirit, so that they may harmonize and orient toward a common discernment. As synodal teams and members of participation bodies certainly know that ecclesial discernment requires “interior freedom, humility, prayer, mutual trust, openness to novelties and abandonment to the will of God. It is never the affirmation of a personal or group point of view, nor does it resolve into the simple sum of individual opinions” (Final Document, October 26, 2024, n. 82). Being a synodal Church means recognizing that truth is not possessed, but sought together, letting ourselves be guided by a restless and enamored heart of Love.

Dear brothers and sisters, we must dream and build a humble Church. A Church that does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and full of itself, but that lowers itself to wash the feet of humanity; a Church that does not judge as the Pharisee does with the tax collector, but becomes a welcoming place for all and for each one; a Church that does not close itself in on itself, but remains listening to God so as to be able, at the same time, to listen to all. Let us commit ourselves to building a totally synodal Church, totally ministerial, totally attracted by Christ and therefore dedicated to the service of the world.

Upon you, upon all of us, upon the Church spread throughout the world, I invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary with the words of the servant of God Don Tonino Bello: “Holy Mary, affable woman, nourish in our Churches the longing for communion. […] Help it to overcome internal divisions. Intervene when the demon of discord serpents in its bosom. Extinguish the foci of factions. Reconcile mutual disputes. Soften its rivalries. Stop them when they decide to act on their own, neglecting convergence in common projects” (Maria, Donna dei nostri giorni, Cinisello Balsamo 1993, 99).

May the Lord grant us the grace to remain rooted in the love of God to live in communion among ourselves. To be, as Church, witnesses of unity and love.