The Benedictine bishop Marian Eleganti, former auxiliary of the Swiss diocese of Coira, has offered a first-person reflection on the profound changes experienced in the Church in recent decades, from his childhood as an altar boy to his episcopal ministry.
In an interview granted to AdVaticanum, Eleganti recounts his own life and priestly journey, marked by the transition between the traditional liturgy and the reform following the Second Vatican Council, as well as his pastoral experience in an increasingly secularized Europe.
From childhood in the traditional rite to the liturgical reform
Born in 1955, Eleganti clearly remembers his early years serving as an altar boy in the traditional liturgy. That experience, he says, shaped his spiritual sensitivity from a very young age. The shift to the new rite was not, in his case, an abstract matter, but a concrete transformation that he lived firsthand.
He describes that moment as “a rather violent and provisional reconstruction of the Holy Mass,” in which—according to him—“great losses” occurred in elements such as prayers, gestures, or the orientation toward God. That experience allows him today to understand why many young people feel attracted to the ancient rite.
“The appeal of the ancient liturgy lies in its centrality in God or in Christ, and not in the community,” he explains. He adds other elements that, based on his experience, respond to a deep spiritual need: “the palpable reverence before the transcendent God,” the silence that refers to the Apocalypse, or the beauty of the liturgical signs, from Gregorian chant to the entire sanctuary.
However, far from falling into formal reductionism, he nuances with a statement that synthesizes his inner experience: “I am not devout because I kneel; I kneel because I am devout.” The form, he insists, does not substitute for faith, but it can help to express it or, on the contrary, dilute it.
A trajectory marked by personal decisions
Eleganti’s life has not been free of tensions. His time in the Swiss episcopate was marked by decisions that reflect fidelity to conscience above majority dynamics.
In 2018, he resigned from his responsibility in the Swiss bishops’ youth pastoral after disagreements in the Synod on Young People. Later, in 2021, he submitted his resignation as auxiliary bishop at the age of 65, a decade earlier than usual. These decisions do not appear in the interview as isolated episodes, but as part of a vital coherence.
His figure has been characterized precisely by that clarity, which has led him to address sensitive issues with frankness, even at the cost of tensions within the ecclesiastical sphere itself.
Pastoral experience in the face of the decline of faith
From his direct experience as a priest and bishop, Eleganti offers an unnuanced diagnosis of Europe’s spiritual situation. In the specific case of Switzerland, he speaks of a weakly rooted faith, more cultural than lived.
“Many have been baptized, but never became true disciples of Christ,” he states. He does not present it as a moral judgment, but as a pastoral observation.
In his view, the underlying problem is deeper than any specific reform: “The worst of evils is the practical irrelevance of God in our society.” That is, it is not just a crisis of religious practices, but a loss of God as a real reference in everyday life.
This void, he warns, has been filled by ideologies that have replaced Christianity without offering a solid alternative, generating a cultural transformation that directly affects the life of the Church.
Renewal from what is lived
Faced with this panorama, Eleganti does not propose abstract strategies, but paths that arise from his own pastoral experience. His proposal is simple in its formulation, but demanding in its content: return to the center.
“As a parish priest, I would begin by celebrating the Holy Mass as deeply and beautifully as possible, accompanied by a brief catechesis,” he explains. From there, he describes a parish life that springs from the liturgy: encounters between families, friendship, formation, and community.
“The Church begins to renew itself when the Holy Mass occupies the center of life,” he insists. And he adds a significant image: “If the priest is a lovesick wife, the community that gathers around him will soon be the same.” For Eleganti, renewal is not imposed from structures, but born from the authentic experience of faith.
A testimony that spans decades of changes
Eleganti’s journey—from altar boy in the traditional rite to bishop in a Church marked by secularization—allows him to offer a gaze that integrates memory, experience, and critical judgment.
He speaks not from theory, but from decades of priestly life in which he has seen the liturgy, religious practice, and Christian culture in Europe transform. That experience leads him to a clear conclusion: without the centrality of God, without doctrinal coherence, and without a sacramental life lived with depth, the Church loses its capacity to renew the lives of the faithful.
His testimony, in short, is not only a reflection on the past, but a warning about the present and a call to recover the essential.