Francis says Benedict is right that future Church will be smaller, more authentic

As has become customary on the Pope's international trips, earlier this month in Malta, the Holy Father had an informal meeting with local members of his own religious family, the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits.

A transcription of this informal conversation of about 40 minutes, held on the morning of Sunday, April 3, 2022, at the Apostolic Nunciature in the presence of 38 Maltese religious, was posted online by La Civiltà Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit magazine, before its publication in paper format on April 16.

The Pope was asked what the future of the Church will be like, as it becomes smaller in secular Europe, while it develops quickly in Asia and Africa. "Where is it going," he was asked.

To answer the question, the Pope stated immediately that "Pope Benedict was a prophet of this Church of the future, a Church that will become smaller, lose many privileges, be more humble and authentic, and find energy for the essential. It will be a Church that is more spiritual, poorer, and less political: a Church of the little ones. As a bishop, Benedict had said: Let us prepare ourselves to be a smaller Church."

Pope Francis went so far as to say that this is one of Benedict XVI's "richest intuitions."

The Holy Father acknowledged the problem of a lack of vocations for many religious orders, linking it to the fact that there are simply fewer young people, as families have perhaps only one child. "Marriages are decreasing, while people think about growing in their profession," he added.

Such a situation also brings the risk of "wanting to seek vocations without adequate discernment," a danger that the Pope has warned about on other occasions.

The Pope has brought attention to this issue before, for example in the post-synodal apostolic exhortation after the synod on the Amazon. There he pointed out: "It is noteworthy that, in some countries of the Amazon Basin, more missionaries go to Europe or the United States than remain to assist their own Vicariates in the Amazon region."

"Europe has aged. We have to get used to this, but we have to do it creatively, so as to take for vocations the qualities that you mentioned in general for the Church in your question: humility, service, authenticity," the Pope told the Jesuits.

He also addressed the questioner's query about the synodal journey of the Church.

Then, the Pope returned again to a vision of the Church.

Finally, I want to say that we must not forget that jewel that is Paul VI's Evangelii Nuntiandi. What is the vocation of the Church? It is not numbers. It is to evangelize. The joy of the Church is to evangelize. The real problem is not if we are few, in other words, but if the Church evangelizes. In the meetings before the Conclave, they talked about the profile of the new pope. It was precisely there, in the General Congregations, that the image of a Church that goes out was used. In Revelation it says, "I stand at the door and knock." But today the Lord is knocking from within so that we may let him go out. This is the need of today, the vocation of the Church today.