As the synod on young people drew to a close, Cardinal Gerald Lacroix, the archbishop of Quebec, told America that the gathering was not just about youth. “We’ve spoken about the whole church because the youth are part of the church,” he said, “and if we listen to them and enter into dialogue and conversation with them, we will see that we need to change some things, and they will see that they need to adapt and change some things.”
He is convinced that “this conversation will bring the whole church further to a better relationship, to better live our mission.”
He said the cardinals and bishops who participated in the synod may have “a little more wisdom” because of age and experience, but the young people “have the enthusiasm and the creativity to help us bring Jesus Christ to the world and to share this important mission.”
He believes this conversation “also relates to the whole question of how we live the church.”
“Young people have exhorted us,” he said, “invited us to more transparency, to ‘walk the talk’ as they say, to be more coherent in our way of living.”
“Very often in their talks, they say, ‘We want pastors who are witnesses, not just masters to explain the faith, [but] who live it, who are in a personal and loving relationship with the Lord, who take the Gospel seriously and implement it in their lives.’”
“Young people have exhorted us,” he said, “invited us to more transparency, to ‘walk the talk’ as they say, to be more coherent in our way of living.”
“I think [that expectation is] going to change the whole church,” the cardinal said.
Cardinal Lacroix also spoke about the synodal process, the role of women in the church and the impact of the sexual abuse scandal. The jovial 61-year-old Canadian, made cardinal by Pope Francis in 2014, shared one of the important lessons he takes away from this three-week gathering: “There’s so much variety and diversity in the church. We can’t just think that Italy and Europe is the center of the church. We’re a universal church, and it is very good that we discover this.”
He has attended synods in 2012 on the new evangelization and the transmission of the Christian faith and the Synod of Bishops on the family in 2015. That gathering included some married couples, but this latest synod with young people “was different,” he said.
“They were much more active, and they make their presence very well known,” the cardinal explained.
“They applaud, they shout, they holler when they are in agreement, when they hear something they really like and that’s important.” Moreover, “they have shared very, very good things with us which are eye-openers.” He added that in the small linguistic groups “they were very at ease with sharing their experiences from their own countries, their experiences in the church, what their questions are, their comments, their suggestions.”
Cardinal Lacroix believes that this gathering suggests that “synodality” has taken root in the church. There was “not just an exchange of ideas but to seek what the Lord is telling the church right now by listening profoundly to each other and not just bringing in our ideas and making sure they pass. Listening to others, and [doing so] with respect, trying to discover where they are coming from as brothers and to be much more open and interested, truly interested in what others are living.”
He said he has “learned so much from other churches, the Catholic churches in Africa, in Asia by listening to where they’re coming from, what they’re experiencing, because they have spoken, they have brought their ideas, their testimonies.”
“It’s urgent that we find a way to be close enough to young people, to invite them to encounter Jesus Christ; encounter the one who can give direction to their life, the one who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
He has discovered the church’s diversity of experiences and needs, for example, in the fact that while Europe and North America church leaders were anxious “because we’ve lost our youth...Africa is saying, on the contrary, our churches are filled with young people, our churches are alive with young people, who are very committed, very engaged, are part of our daily lives, and we’ve got vocations coming from everywhere.”
“It’s just not the same reality that we are living in Europe and North America,” the cardinal said. He sees the diversity emerge too when one “listens to participants from the Middle East and the Asian countries who are going through times of war and [forced] migration.”
Cardinal Lacroix said, “We’ve heard some very, very important things from these countries; from the bishops, from the auditors, from the young people, that have moved us.”
But he asked, “how can we not be aware in our communities, in our own church that in those countries there’s slavery, there’s forced labor, that there’s human trafficking?” He continued: “We can’t make believe that it doesn’t exist…. So coming together as Christian communities is very powerful.”
He noted that some countries in the Middle East, such as the Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, have taken in millions of refugees from Syria and Iraq, but “we think in Canada” by taking in “30,000 or 40,000 a year that we’re very generous. Come on!”
“How can we not be aware in our communities, in our own church that in those countries there’s slavery, there’s forced labor, that there’s human trafficking? We can’t make believe that it doesn’t exist.”
The Trump administration has limited the 2019 refugee resettlement quota in the United States to just 30,000 people. Countries in Europe have proved similarly resistant to refugee numbers, the cardinal said. Pope Francis “has often spoken about this” and what he has called “the Mediterranean cemetery.”
“People fleeing from situations in Africa and going to Italy, Spain and other places, but so many drown in the sea, and that is something that the media in the Western countries don’t speak much about,” Cardinal Lacroix said. “We don’t hear much about this in Canada. And this is an international tragedy.”
Because of the synod, he has learned that “it’s urgent that we find a way to be close enough to young people, to invite them to encounter Jesus Christ; encounter the one who can give direction to their life, the one who is the Way, the Truth and the Life; the one who can give them what they need to blossom, to become what they’re called to be, and to take an active part in the life of the church and in the world.”
“Jesus does not just make us go to church, he makes us people able to live in the midst of this world and transform it, and that I think is what’s important.” As cardinals and bishops, he said, “we have a very big responsibility to help young people encounter that living Lord, that Risen Jesus who fascinates young people and old.”
But, he said, “to be able to bring young people to Jesus, we have to be with them; we have to have a relationship of trust so that they will be open to listening to us. We cannot do this from the pulpit; it has to be on ground zero with them. That’s the challenge!”
Another challenge is for bishops to affirm the role of women in the church in concrete ways. “Some local churches already have women in very important and strategic places in the church,” he said, “others not as much. But I see openness towards that.
“Every time we are not faithful to living the Gospel, we are hurting the church; we are hurting people, and our testimony is just not up to par.”
“I was very pleased to hear bishops, cardinals and of course the young people, say we cannot avoid this question.” It is not a question of equality, he said, but of complementarity.
Men and women are different, “but we need each other,” Cardinal Lacroix said. “In our seminary where we train priests, we have a woman on the team; it brings something unique and special. In the diocesan offices in our curia, we have a woman, a mother, a grandmother...and she’s coordinating all the pastoral activities in the diocese....and she has all the trust, as do many of the women who work in very important positions.”
But, he said, “if we’re going to talk about this question, we have to avoid just focusing on the question of ordination and see the role of women and what they bring because they’re women; their sensitivity to things, their way of looking at the world and people and situations.
“We need to have that complementarity which enriches the church so much. Let’s be honest: Where would the church be without women? Catechists, mothers—that’s where it all begins, on mom’s knees for most of us. They’re carrying the transmission of the Christian faith in a very special way. I think women need to hear this.”
The global sexual abuse scandal was also part of the discussion, the cardinal said. “Throughout the synod some people have brought up this issue; sometimes it has been the young people, sometimes it’s been the auditors, it’s been bishops, and I think it’s a good thing that we didn’t make believe that this doesn’t exist.
“This is important because in the sexual abuse crisis it’s been mostly children and young people who have been hurt, badly hurt.” At the same time, he said, “we need to see that this cannot be the issue of the synod; it’s an important one but there are many other issues too.”
“Every time we are not faithful to living the Gospel,” he said, “we are hurting the church; we are hurting people, and our testimony is just not up to par.
“When we close our eyes on all this poverty and hunger and injustice, that’s very bad because we are hurting young people and children and families,” he said. “When we close our eyes and not react in some countries where there’s so much terrorism and human trafficking and trafficking in human organs and all this, we’re hurting the church, we’re not faithful to the Lord. And in this area, which has been in the news quite a bit, of the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults, it’s the same thing.”
He told America that he was pleased that the church “is reacting” to the crisis.
“In Canada since 1992, we’ve had some very clear protocols and policies to react immediately. Just before coming here, we published...new policies on what the Vatican is asking of us and what we’ve learned through these difficult years and what must change and what we must do in our dioceses and communities in these coming years to put forth the necessary protection and ways to react so that this will never happen again.”
The Quebec cardinal said, “I think that out of this is coming something good, which is more awareness.”
At the same time, Cardinal Lacroix recognized that “definitely this has hurt us very, very much and people have lost trust. I meet people sometimes who tell me, ‘I believe in Christ and his Gospel but not in you, not in the church.’ And we have to understand those people. They have been hurt very deeply, or someone in their families, that’s very difficult you know.”
He insisted, however, that “we cannot just focus...on that past. I’m proud that our church is reacting; we want to change.
“The Holy Father has been very clear on this, and also the different offices of the [Roman] Curia that deal with this. He’s called the meeting in the Vatican next February of the presidents of all the bishops conferences from around the world to address this question of abuse and how to prevent it. We’re taking this very seriously; that’s where I’m coming from and that’s what brings a little bit of peace.”
[Explore America's in-depth coverage of the Synod on Young Adults]
