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A day after He went, memories of Pope Francis come piercing with Realization
Opinion | Articles | James Pochury | 22-Apr-2025
The news broke quietly, like a whisper lost in the noise of our indifferent world: Pope Francis had passed away. For many, it was a passing headline. For those who understood what he represented, it was the end of an era. And for those of us shaped by rights-based political work and hardened by the contradictions of ecclesial and humanitarian institutions, it felt like losing a last-standing bridge between radical Christian hope and political consciousness.
This grief was not just personal; it was deeply political. Pope Francis was no perfect saviour, but he represented a bold attempt to disrupt one of the most ancient, powerful, and opaque institutions in the world. His papacy was a confrontation—not just with conservative Catholicism, but with the hidden architecture of power that sustains empires, silences the margins, and sanitizes spirituality for comfort and control.
Synodality as Disruption: A New Theology of Power
Pope Francis’s Synod on Synodality was not a bureaucratic reform. It was a full-frontal challenge to the Church’s top-down, clericalist operating system. Synodality was rooted in a theology of listening and walking together—an echo of the early Church, of liberation theology, and of grassroots organizing. It sought to recover power within the faithful rather than reinforce power over them.
Francis attempted to shift the Church from monologue to dialogue, from vertical command to horizontal discernment. But even within this vision lay danger: the risk of tokenism. As seen across institutions—religious, secular, humanitarian—participation often becomes performance. Committees replace communities. The “walk together” becomes a well-funded parade that ends at the gates of exclusion.
This is not a critique of synodality’s intent but of the institutional immune system that resists it. Those who benefit from invisible power will always cloak themselves in the language of participation while working tirelessly to keep transformation cosmetic.
The Mirror Between Church and World: Neoliberal Humanitarianism and the Replication of Power
Many of us who have spent decades in development and humanitarian organizations—especially those mandated by religious bodies—have seen the contradictions up close. These institutions speak the language of justice, empowerment, and accompaniment. But structurally, they remain hierarchical, risk-averse, patriarchal, and disconnected from the people they claim to serve.
Much like the Church they mirror, these organizations are often caught in a web of donor dependence, programmatic reporting, and performative inclusion. Leadership remains centralized. The narrative is sanitized. And local voices, especially Indigenous ones, are absorbed into structures that offer platforms without power.
This is not coincidence. It is the system functioning exactly as designed. The same neoliberal logic that drives global capital also infects humanitarianism. Privatization of suffering. Professionalization of solidarity. Metrics replacing movements. In this landscape, Pope Francis’s cry for a synodal Church was a political act. It was a call to exorcise the spirit of managerialism from mission. And for that, he was loved, hated, misunderstood, and ultimately resisted.
Francis Against the Machine: Why His Revolution May Never Be Realized
If Vatican II cracked open a window, Francis tried to blow open the doors. But revolutions do not thrive in atmospheres thick with compromise. His gestures—the washing of prisoners’ feet, the embrace of migrants, the apology to Indigenous Peoples—were powerful. But symbolic acts cannot undo centuries of doctrine forged in colonialism and patriarchy.
He appointed laywomen, supported climate justice, and challenged the idolatry of markets. Yet the machine of the Church remained intact. The Curia adapted without transforming. Local episcopal conferences continued to drag their feet. Bishops who should have echoed his radicalism opted instead for silence or subtle sabotage.
Francis, the revolutionary shepherd, was often left walking alone.
His vision demanded not just a pastoral shift but a tectonic realignment of power—from Rome to the margins, from clerics to communities, from secrecy to synodality. It was a vision too large for the institution’s current structure to hold. And like so many prophets before him, his ideas may only find life in the struggle of those who continue long after his death.
The Empire Within: Why the Church Mirrors the World It Seeks to Transform
The Catholic Church does not simply operate in the world; it reflects it. Its institutions reproduce the same caste hierarchies, patriarchal norms, and exclusionary politics found in the states and systems it often critiques.
Critics of Hindu supremacy or corporate hegemony in India, for instance, must also contend with caste-based discrimination inside Catholic dioceses. The Church’s discomfort with feminism and Indigenous autonomy often mirrors the anxieties of postcolonial nation-states. Those called to be shepherds frequently become gatekeepers. And the People of God are reduced to passive recipients of liturgy and aid rather than active agents of history.
This crisis of contradiction is spiritual, yes—but it is also political. It is about who decides, who is heard, and who benefits. Until the Church confronts its own empire within, its gospel will remain fragmented, and its mission domesticated.
In Pope Francis, we glimpsed a Church willing to confront this empire. His death must not mark the end of that vision. It must be the spark that ignites the prophetic imagination of the faithful—from the Andes to the Northeast hills of India, from the Amazon to Bangkok.
Synodality: AGift that must not be t Might Never Be — Unless…
If the Church loses the moment Pope Francis has pried open with bare hands—aged, bruised, mocked, and resisted—it may not find that moment again. Synodality is not a project; it is a reckoning. It is not consultation; it is confrontation—of one’s own comfort, collusion, and conscience.
Francis has not merely suggested walking together; he has shattered the floor that kept the laity beneath and raised the prophetic voices from the periphery. But just as Vatican II became an unfinished revolution, synodality is already being papered over with curated listening, bureaucratic diagrams, and doctrinal anesthesia. “Unity,” they say, “requires order.” But order without justice is not unity—it is enforced silence. The betrayal is already underway.
From Latin America to India, from Oceania to Africa, from the Amazon to Arunachal, there are bishops and religious who continue to weaponize silence, paternalism, and ecclesial opacity. They invoke tradition to guard control. They keep “dialogue” superficial. They confuse power with pastoral care. The synodal process is either being co-opted or ignored. As with Vatican II, the fear is not failure. The fear is slow suffocation—of a dream deferred, dismantled, and quietly buried.
What then must emerge?
A Church no longer obsessed with purity, but hungry for justice. A Church not afraid of Marxists, feminists, Indigenous spiritualities, or queerness—but curious, wounded, humble enough to learn from those it once exiled. A Church where the hierarchy knows it must listen more than speak, and speak only when it has walked with the wounded. A Church that can say, in public and without fear, “we were wrong,” and still live.
For synodality to live, it must break open the sacristies and secretariats. It must name the caste systems within dioceses. It must end the clericalism in religious orders. It must no longer treat women as appendages of a masculine salvation story. It must understand that “walking together” is not poetry. It is praxis. And praxis, as Latin American theologians taught us, is always political. This is not about reform. It is about metanoia—a turning of soul, structure, and story.
If this fails, the Church will not die. But it will ossify. It will become a museum of rituals detached from the cries of the Earth and the crucified of history. It will preach from pulpits but weep in catacombs.
But if it succeeds—if the laity rise, if the peripheries speak, if the Church remembers the weight of the Gospels and the wounds of the people—then the synodality that Pope Francis began will become not just a phase, but a future.
And that future, like the Galilean he followed, will begin not in Rome, but in the margins.
Low-Hanging Fruits: Tangible First Steps
- Create Protected Spaces for Prophetic Voices from the Margins
Dioceses and religious congregations must immediately establish safe, well-resourced, and lay-led “Synodal Listening Hubs” where Indigenous, Dalit, women, LGBTQ+, disabled, and grassroots leaders speak without clerical moderation or posturing. These spaces should be held accountable through periodic public reporting and non-hierarchical facilitation.
If you can’t listen without interrupting or editing, you are not ready to walk together.
- Audit and Dismantle Internal Power Monopolies in Church Structures
Every diocese, seminary, and religious institution must undergo a publicly documented review of caste, gender, class, and ethnicity-based exclusion from leadership, decision-making, and resource control. Begin by releasing disaggregated data on staffing, representation, and funding patterns.
Transparency is the beginning of metanoia.
- Open Ecclesial Education to Alternative Theologies and Political Praxis
Introduce Liberation Theology, Feminist Theology, Indigenous Spiritualities, and ecological ethics into seminarian and lay formation curriculums—especially those from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. These should not be electives or “optional modules,” but core to the theological formation of Church workers.
De-westernizing theology is not a threat to Catholicism—it is its salvation.
Bolder, Systemic Shifts: The Harder but Urgent Pathways
- Redistribute Power: Canonical Recognition of Lay and Marginalised Assemblies
Move beyond symbolic inclusion: create canonically recognized People’s Synodal Assemblies with decision-making authority—not merely consultative status. The assemblies must have veto power on matters affecting land, labor, liturgy, and livelihoods. This will decentralize ecclesial authority and restore credibility.
Representation without power is benevolent tyranny.
- Reimagine Church Finances: From Control to Co-responsibility
Redesign ecclesial funding and resource flows to reflect Gospel priorities. Instead of top-down donor-driven models, move towards participatory budgeting, community stewardship, and resource guardianship led by those most impacted.
The Church cannot preach poverty while hoarding wealth and silencing dissent.
- Build a Global Synodal Solidarity Movement Beyond Rome
Establish a transnational movement of Catholic and allied faith-justice communities—from Indigenous councils to theological institutes to activist networks—that will keep the synodal vision alive regardless of Vatican inertia. This movement must remain autonomous but theologically grounded, prophetic, and deeply connected across continents.
The Spirit blows where it will—not where it’s permitted.
The greatest parting gift to this noble soul would be to fulfil his dreams about how he wanted the Universal Church to be. Then only can we assume that “Prophets Don’t Die, They Multiply”
The author is the Convenor of NECARF, Regional Coordinator, RAOEN (River Above Asia Oceania Ecclesial Network). Views expressed are personal,
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