ROME
Boston Herald
Sunday, October 18, 2015
By: Brian Dowling
Pope Francis has put Vatican insiders on notice in a speech to bishops, envisioning a church that draws its power from the people instead of a stodgy, disconnected hierarchy — a move to shift the church’s center of gravity that experts say brings it back to its roots.
“The centralization of all authority in Rome is in fact a modern idea, and basically Pope Francis wants to move us back to a pattern that was more typical of the early church,” said Thomas H. Groome, a professor and director of Boston College’s Church of the 21st Century Center.
Pope Francis told bishops yesterday at a Vatican synod on family issues that “walking together” as a church of lay people, bishops and a pope “is an easy concept to put into words, but not so easy to put into practice.”
But having a church that gives everyone a say would be a great example to the world that “often hands over the destiny of entire populations into the greedy hands of restricted groups of the powerful,” Francis said.
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