James Pochury –
The Morning After: Grief, Memory, and a Piercing Realization
The news of Pope Francis’s passing came quietly, amid the clamour of a world too accustomed to loss. For many, it was just another headline; for those of us who had witnessed his efforts to reshape the Church, it marked the end of an era. It feels as though we’ve lost the last bridge between radical Christian hope and political action—between faith and the world it seeks to transform.
This grief is not merely personal; it is deeply political. Pope Francis was no flawless saviour, but his papacy represented an unprecedented attempt to challenge the Church’s centuries-old structures of power. He confronted not only the entrenched conservative Catholicism but also the broader, invisible forces that maintain empires, suppress marginalized voices, and co-opt spirituality to serve control.
Synodality as Disruption: A New Theology of Power
Pope Francis’s vision of Synodality was not just about procedural reforms—it was a direct challenge to the hierarchical, top-down system of the Church. His call for synodality embodied a theology of listening, of walking together. It was an echo of the early Church, of liberation theology, and of grassroots organizing. It sought to reclaim power with the people, rather than asserting control over them.
He tried to shift the Church from a one-way monologue to a dialogue—a horizontal discernment rather than a vertical command. But even within this vision, there was the ever-present risk of tokenism. We have all seen, within institutions—religious and secular alike—how participation can often become little more than a show. Committees take the place of communities, and “walking together” turns into a well-funded parade that leaves the marginalized at the gates.
This is not a critique of synodality itself, but of the institutional resistance to true change. Those who benefit from unseen power often disguise themselves with the language of participation, while quietly maintaining the status quo.
The Mirror Between Church and World: Neoliberal Humanitarianism and the Replication of Power
For many of us working within rights based approach to development and humanitarian organizations, especially those linked to religious institutions, the contradictions are stark. These institutions often speak the language of justice, empowerment, and accompaniment, but in practice, they remain hierarchical, patriarchal, and disconnected from the people they claim to serve.
Much like the Church, these organizations mirror the same structures they profess to critique. They are caught in webs of donor dependence, performative inclusion, and bureaucratic reporting. Leadership remains centralized, and local voices—especially Indigenous ones—are absorbed into structures that offer platforms but not real power.
This is not by accident; it is the system working as intended. The same neoliberal logic that drives global capital has infected humanitarian work, privatizing suffering and professionalizing solidarity. In this landscape, Pope Francis’s call for a synodal Church was a radical political act—a challenge to the managerialism that has become the dominant force even within faith-based work. And for this, he was loved, despised, misunderstood, and ultimately resisted.
Francis Against the Machine: Why His Revolution May Never Be Realised
If Vatican II cracked open a window, Pope Francis tried to blow the doors wide open. But revolutions do not flourish in environments thick with compromise. His gestures—washing the feet of prisoners, embracing migrants, apologizing to Indigenous Peoples—were powerful. But symbolic acts, while necessary, cannot undo the centuries of doctrine that have been shaped by colonialism and patriarchy.
He appointed laywomen, championed climate justice, and challenged the idolatry of markets. Yet the Church’s machine remained largely intact. The Curia adapted without transforming. Bishops who should have echoed his radical vision chose silence, or worse, sabotaged it.
Francis, the revolutionary shepherd, often found himself walking alone. His vision was not just about a pastoral shift, but a radical reordering of power—from Rome to the margins, from clerics to communities, from secrecy to synodality. It was a vision too large for the Church’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 after his death.
The Empire Within: Why the Church Mirrors the World It Seeks to Transform
The Catholic Church doesn’t just operate in the world—it mirrors it. Its structures often reproduce the same caste hierarchies, patriarchal norms, and exclusionary politics found in the states and systems it critiques.
In India, for example, those fighting Hindu supremacy or corporate hegemony 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. The bishops, called to be shepherds, often become gatekeepers. And the People of God are reduced to passive recipients of liturgy and aid rather than active agents of history.
This contradiction is not merely spiritual—it is deeply political. It is about who has the power to decide, who is listened to, and who benefits. Until the Church confronts its own internal empire, its gospel will remain fragmented, and its mission domesticated.
In Pope Francis, we saw a Church willing to confront this empire. His death should not mark the end of that vision—it must serve as the spark that ignites the prophetic imagination of the faithful, from the Andes to the hills of Northeast India, from the Amazon to Bangkok. Prophets don’t die. They multiply.
The Synodality That Might Never Be—Unless…
If the Church allows the moment Pope Francis created with bare hands—worn, bruised, mocked, and resisted—to slip away, it may never come again. Synodality is not a project or a program; it is a reckoning. It is not mere consultation; it is confrontation—with one’s own comfort, collusion, and conscience.
Francis did not simply suggest walking together—he shattered the floor that kept the laity below and raised the prophetic voices from the periphery. Yet, like Vatican II, synodality is already at risk of being diluted with curated listening, bureaucratic diagrams, and doctrinal anesthetization. “Unity,” they say, “requires order.” But order without justice is not unity—it is enforced silence.
The betrayal is already underway.
Across the world—Latin America, India, Oceania, Africa, from the Amazon to Asia—bishops and religious leaders continue to weaponize silence, paternalism, and ecclesial opacity. They invoke tradition to maintain control. They keep dialogue superficial. They confuse power with pastoral care. The synodal process is either being co-opted or ignored altogether. As with Vatican II, the real fear is not failure, but slow suffocation—the slow dismantling of a dream that is quietly buried.
What Then Must Emerge?
A Church no longer obsessed with purity, but hungry for justice. A Church that isn’t afraid of Marxists, feminists, Indigenous spiritualities, or queerness—but one that is curious, wounded, and humble enough to learn from those it once exiled. A Church where the hierarchy understands it must listen more than speak, and speak only after walking with the wounded. A Church that can say, “We were wrong”—and still live.
For synodality to endure, it must break open the sacristies and secretariats. It must expose the caste systems within dioceses. It must end the clericalism in religious orders. It must no longer treat women as appendages in a masculine salvation story. It must recognize that “walking together” is not just poetry—it is praxis. And praxis, as Latin American theologians have taught us, is always political.
This is not about reform. It is about metanoia—a fundamental transformation 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…
James Pochury is an Executive Member of the Indian Catholic Forum of the North East.
