Pedro Walpole SJ
Listening to communities as they express their challenges and hopes at the local level reflect great resilience and integrity. Recently, I was asked by the General Secretariat on Synodality to offer some small workshops for the pilgrims visiting St Peter’s Basilica, and that will focus on a synodal Church that listens to the cry of the poor and the earth.
The past months were very engaging regionally with the preparations for the Jubilee Pilgrimage and for local and regional participation in the coming COP 30 and the exchanges, while global in representation, are often deeply personal as a spiritual experience.
There are over 30 million pilgrims this year seeking to pass through the Jubilee Door. Certainly there was a deep sense at St Peter’s of the joyous crowds that made the basilica into a living experience that is more glorious than the physical construction. Right around the altar, left and right, were families and pilgrims from everywhere who had made the journey. Being at the base of the altar as one of the consecrating priests accompanying Pope Leo was for me a humbling spiritual experience.
I was astonished to meet such committed pilgrims from the Global North who are so inspired to participate in the journey of change and who humbly know what they are about. The sense of pilgrimage is profoundly embedded now in so many living communities around the world.
Feedback from the workshop
Much time was spent sharing on socio-economic-political imposed suffering and while not all had the felt experience of the cry of the land and how the two cries were one, there was acknowledgement and openness to listen and grow together.
Many workshop participants felt discouraged, sensing that past progress toward social and ecological justice and awareness is now lost or reversed. Yet they emphasized the synodal process allowing the Church to face these difficult realities with solidarity, dialogue, and shared responsibility. They expressed the desire to raise future generations and build communities that value unity and collective care for one another and for creation.
They recognized that responding to these cries requires conversion of hearts, of lifestyles, and of Church structures toward a more synodal way of listening, sharing, and acting together. They realized too that hope lies in the Church’s capacity to accompany suffering communities, promote ecological justice, and embody the love of Christ through real acts of solidarity.
Insights were shared on greater generational hope and the desire to create with future generations the understanding for building communities that value unity and collective care for one another and for creation. Local struggles and action for global transformation focused around how environmental degradation always hits marginalized people the hardest and calls for stronger networking among faith communities and interreligious groups to care for creation. Examples included interfaith cooperation in Thailand and Church efforts in Germany to promote eco-friendly economies. They concluded that listening to one another’s local struggles helps create a collective voice for global transformation.
Underscoring meaningful change doesn’t always require massive movements. Local parishes and ordinary believers can lead by example in caring for the earth and supporting one another.
Most questions where more existential thoughts on the broader framework of how humanity is going to live together and the exclusion of women and when and how will this change. Others were asking about what and how to act. There were no questions about how synodality works or doubts about being involved.
Responses abound with simple caring expression. In the West Tennessee Diocese in the US, there are many ecological challenges and also growing poverty. They allowed the use of the parish carpark for people who live in their cars and also formed a new commission on care for creation and stories are emerging.
Another pilgrim spoke of her exposure in a visit to the Philippines as a transformative experience. With this, I sense that a program with a formative process will grow in the light of synodality.
A participant from the Salzburg Archdiocese in Austria shared the experience of talking with transnational truck drivers and thanking them for their service, and basically expressing gratitude and forming an experience of welcome and inclusion. It is not clear if this engagement developed deep roots but the experience was moving.
Another participant from the Broome Diocese in Australia shared the openness with people in communities and the extensive pastoral engagement reaching aboriginal communities and life on the land.
My input during the workshops focused on the lived experience of an integral ecology that calls for journeying closely with those suffering. This allows the discovery of the mutual hope and community that allows the poor, particularly Indigenous Peoples, to share their woundedness and life – the life of all sentient beings, land and seas, so all from the margins can participate in pastoral life of the church and the mission of Jesus.
“Listening to the cry of the poor and of the earth” became a key study area for the Synod because the Church’s preferential option for the poor is considered a fundamental theological imperative, a core value of identity and mission of the Church and not an optional concern.
The need is amplified by new forms of poverty arising from wars, terrorism, corrupt and exploitative political systems, and also includes victims of exploitation, violence and vulnerability alongside ecological destruction, including climate change and biodiversity loss.
The lives of millions in the margins, who are the majority of humanity, suffer alienation, hunger, war and exploitation. This demands a Church that is more attentive and actively present to the marginalized and to the planet’s suffering.
We live in a humanly determined world with power, greed, and force affecting dignity, behavior, and social structures, as well as humility, service and sacrifice affecting and reshaping this integral ecology of all beings.
Jesus said “you will always have the poor with you” (Mt. 26:11). In the Gospel context, Jesus showed great empathy as he moved towards his passion and death, and in this he shows us that he is the poor. This is why we find the face of Jesus in the poor.
We are called in synodality to fill any gap between the Church and the poor with love and communion, and accompany where possible but knowing it is Jesus who saves, not our actions.
“Synodality and integral ecology both take on the character of relationality and insist upon us nurturing what binds us together; this is why they correspond to and complement each other concerning how the mission of the Church is lived out in today’s world.” (From the Final Document, Synod of Bishops 16th Ordinary General Assembly. 2023. Synthesis Report, Section 48n)
Exploring this relationality of ecology and synodality is needed for we are constantly interconnected with a living and suffering creation that lives in us – from the air we breathe, water we drink, and the food we eat, through people and the resources used. We are creation – a suffering creation that needs healing and hope through our living.
The youth especially seek deep acceptance and accompaniment in a faith community that listens to them and strengthens their hope. Accompanying Indigenous Peoples’ participation in pastoral engagement ensures their voices are heard. This is how Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) work, and drawing on the fruits of reflection, BECs open up to a broader dialogue, collaboration, and advocacy for action sustained by faith. The topic also addresses issues of exclusion and lack of welcome within the Church itself, recognizing that some people are made to feel rejected and are hindered in their faith journey.
The importance of this entire listening process and the journey is not that those accompanying or the community solve the problems, although it is good if that happens. The intent in this journeying together is that each person is changed by the experience from within and shares with hope and commitment in community. As a church, listening means sharing in their pastoral needs and services not as outsiders but as companions on the journey of faith.