Nobody in the Church “should impose his or her own ideas” on others, Pope Leo said on 26 October, asking that tensions between tradition and novelty not become “ideological contrapositions and harmful polarisations”. “The supreme rule in the Church is love. No one is called to dominate, all are called to serve,” Leo said. “No one should impose his or her own ideas – we must all listen to one another,” he continued. “No one is excluded – we are all called to participate. No one possesses the whole truth – we must all humbly seek it and seek it together.”
The Pope celebrated Mass on the thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time for the closing of the Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies, part of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope. In a call for communion, Pope Leo addressed all the participants in the synodality meeting and asked for their help to expand “the ecclesial space” and make it “collegial and welcoming.” “Being a synodal Church means recognising that truth is not possessed but sought together, allowing ourselves to be guided by a restless heart in love with Love,” he emphasised.
The Pope called on Christians to live “with confidence and a new spirit amid the tensions that run through the life of the Church: between unity and diversity, tradition and novelty, authority and participation. We must allow the Spirit to transform them, so that they do not become ideological contrapositions and harmful polarisations.”
It is not a question of resolving these tensions “by reducing one to the other, but of allowing them to be purified by the Spirit, so that they may be harmonised and oriented toward a common discernment”, he said. He insisted that “prior to any difference, we are called in the Church to walk together in the pursuit of God, clothing ourselves with the sentiments of Christ.”
