¹ Pope Francis called all the Presidents of Catholic Bishops Conferences throughout the world to a meeting at the Vatican from 21-24 February 2019 to discuss the situation of abuse in the world wide church and the measures being taken to deal with this, including the acknowledgement of culpability and confession of failings.

² Pope Francis 24^th February 2019.

³ These experiences of hurt and abuse range from comparatively minor matters to more serious and even tragic experiences. There can be a dimension of radical suffering present when the negativity of a situation is experienced as an assault on the integrity of the person. Such suffering is particularly acute because it often strikes at the response of an individual's own response of faith. Cf. Various studies across the years have highlighted the empirical reality including: Conway, Eamonn, “The Service of a Different Kingdom: Child Sexual Abuse and the Response of the Church,” in eds. Conway, Eamonn, Duffy, Eugene, Shields, Attracta, The Church and Child Sexual Abuse; Towards a Pastoral Response, (Dublin: Columba Press, 1999), 76-88Google Scholar; SJ, Joseph Veale, “Meditating on Abusing – and Repenting”, Doctrine and Life, Vol.50, No. 5, (May/June 2000): 296-303Google Scholar; Cassell, Eric, The Nature of Suffering (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Higgins, Michael W. & Kavanagh, Peter, Suffer the Children Unto Me: (Ottawa: Novalis, 2010)Google Scholar; Formicola, Jo Renee, God Weeps: Papal Policies on Clerical Sexual Abuse, (New York: Peter Lang, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ CJ, Gill Goulding Creative Perseverance: Sustaining Life-Giving Ministry in Today's Church, (Ottawa: Novalis, 2003) 19.Google Scholar

⁵ Pope Francis Address to the International Theological Commission, November 29^th 2019.

⁶ International Theological Commission Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, 1^st September 2019, par. 6. The document continues: “The ecclesiology of the People of God stresses the common dignity and mission of all the baptized, in exercising the variety and ordered richness of their charisms, their vocations and their ministries. . . . In this ecclesiological context, synodality is the specific modus vivendi et operandi of the Church, the People of God, which reveals and gives substance to her being as communion when all her members journey together, gather in assembly and take an active part in her evangelizing mission.”

⁷ Ratzinger, Cardinal Joseph, “Le funzioni synodali della Chiesa: limportanza della communion tra I Vescovi”, in L’Osservatore Romano, 24^th January 1996, 4.Google Scholar

⁸ Idem. 43 The paragraph continues: “Exercising synodality makes real the human person's call to live communion, which comes about through sincere self-giving union with God and unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ.”

⁹ Goulding, Gill IBVM, Creative Perseverance: Sustaining Life-giving Ministry in Today's Church, (Ottawa: Novalis, 2003), 16.Google Scholar

¹⁰ “In this context the concept of communion expresses the profound substance of the mystery and mission of the Church, whose source and summit is the Eucharistic synaxis. This is the res of the Sacramentum Ecclesiae: union with God the Trinity and unity between human persons, made real through the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus.” Ibid. C.f. also how the Eucharist is “the centre of the whole of Christian life for the Church both universal and local, as well as for each of the faithful individually.” General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 16.

¹¹ John 13:3-5

¹² “In him everything is a listening to and acceptance of the Father (cf. Jn. 8:28-29); all of his earthly life is an expression and continuation of what the Word does from eternity: letting himself be loved by the Father, accepting his love in an unconditional way, to the point of deciding to do nothing by himself (cf. Jn. 8:28) but to do always what is pleasing to the Father. The will of the Father is the food which sustains Jesus in his work (cf. Jn. 4:34) and which merits for Him and for us the superabundance of the resurrection, the luminous joy of entering into the very heart of God, into the blessed company of his children (cf. Jn. 1:12)” Pope Benedict XVI, The Service of Authority and Obedience, 11^th May 2008. 8.

¹³ Pope Benedict XVI Consistory for Cardinals March 24^th 2006.

¹⁴ Pope Francis, General Audience St Peter's Square Vatican March 26^th 2014. He continued: Another characteristic which also derives from this sacramental union with Christ is a passionate love for the Church. Let us think of that passage from the Letter to the Ephesians in which St Paul states that Christ “loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the Church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (5:25-27). Through Holy Orders the minister dedicates himself entirely to his community and loves it with all his heart: it is his family. The bishop and the priest love the Church in their own community, they love it greatly. How? As Christ loves the Church. St Paul will say the same of marriage: the husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the Church. It is a great mystery of love: this of priestly ministry and that of matrimony are two Sacraments, pathways which people normally take to go to the Lord. A final aspect. The Apostle Paul recommends to the disciple Timothy that he not neglect, indeed, that he always rekindle the gift that is within him. The gift that he has been given through the laying on of hands (cf. 1 Tim 4:14; 2 Tim 1:6). When the ministry is not fostered — the ministry of the bishop, the ministry of the priest — through prayer, through listening to the Word of God, through the daily celebration of the Eucharist and also through regularly going to the Sacrament of Penance, he inevitably ends up losing sight of the authentic meaning of his own service and the joy which comes from a profound communion with Jesus.”

¹⁵ Francis, Pope Gaudete et Exsultate: Apostolic Exhortation on the call to holiness in today's world, 19^th March 2018, 32.Google Scholar

¹⁶ International Theological Commission Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, 1^st September 2019, 68.Google Scholar The document continues: “So, in coming to formulate their own decisions, Pastors must listen carefully to the wishes of the faithful. Canon law stipulates that, in certain cases, they must act only after having sought and obtained the various opinions according to juridically established procedures.”

¹⁷ Pope Francis address to the Bishops of Mexico February 13, 2016. This was also quoted by Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium Apostolic Exhortation, November 24^th 2013, 8

¹⁸ “only a church able to shelter the faces of men and women who knock on her doors will be able to speak to them of God. If we do not know how to decipher their sufferings, if we do not come to understand their needs, then we can offer them nothing. The richness we have flows only when we encounter the smallness of those who beg and this encounter occurs precisely in our hearts, the hearts of Pastors.” Ibid.

¹⁹ Benedict, Pope XVI, Deus Caritas Est: Encyclical, December 25 2005Google Scholar

²⁰ Schindler, David L., “On the Catholic Common Ground Project: The Christological Foundation of Dialogue,“ Communio Vol. 23, No. 4, Winter 1996, 825-851.Google Scholar

²¹ Dialogue as a vital pre-requisite has been espoused within the Church for some considerable time, for example: “Dialogue with God. Dialogue within the Church. Dialogue amongst yourselves. Dialogue with the world, with people with the culture of our days with the poor, with those who have no hope, with those who are seeking a pathway and a meaning for their lives. Without a broad-based dialogue we run the risk of closing ourselves in a museum, as yet another memory of the past.” Archbishop Pablo Puente, Nuncio to the United Kingdom, Homily to the Conference of Religious of England and Wales, Swanwick 31^st January 2001

²² Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio-Pope, “Significato importanza della formazione accademica”, 2009, in Bergoglio-Francis, Nei tuoi occhi è la mia parola, 971, n9.Google Scholar

²³ “By conversion is understood a transformation of the subject and his world. Normally it is a prolonged process though its explicit acknowledgement may be concentrated in a few momentous judgements and decisions. Still it is not just development or even a series of developments. Rather it is a resultant change of course and direction. It is as if one's eyes were opened and one's former world view faded and fell away. . . . Conversion is existential, intensely personal, utterly intimate. But it is not so private as to be solitary. It can happen to many, and they can form a community to sustain one another in their self-transformation and to help one another in working out the implications and fulfilling the promise of their new life.” Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology, (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972) 130.Google Scholar

²⁴ Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Test Everything: Hold Fast to That Which is Good, An Interview with Angelo Sola, trans. Shrady, Maria, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989) 17.Google Scholar

²⁵ For a more fulsome elaboration of the importance of conversion see: Goulding, Gill “Holiness of Mind and Heart: The Dynamic Imperative of conversion and Contemplation for the Study of Theology” in ed. Keating, James, Entering into the mind of Christ: The True Nature of Theology, (Omaha NE: Institute of Priestly Formation, 2014).Google Scholar

²⁶ This presupposition of good in the other, is also the presupposition of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola, which all members of the Society of Jesus undertake during their initial formation of as novices, returning to make the Exercises again for Tertianship. Pope Francis, himself an experienced retreat director was formed by the Exercises.

²⁷ Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium 223. He continues: “This principle enables us to work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results. It helps us patiently to endure difficult and adverse situations, or inevitable changes in our plans. . . . Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return. What we need then, is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in significant historical events. Without anxiety but with clear convictions and tenacity.”

²⁸ Pope Francis Evangelii Gaudium, 228, he continues: “this can only be achieved by those great persons who are willing to go beyond the surface of the conflict and to see others in their deepest dignity. . . . Solidarity, in its deepest and most challenging sense, thus becomes a way of making history in a life setting where conflicts, tensions and oppositions can achieve a diversified and life-giving unity. This is not to opt for a kind of syncretism, for the absorption of one into the other, but rather for a resolution which takes place on higher plane and preserves what is valid and useful on both sides.”

²⁹ Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 235.

³⁰ Ibid 236, He continues: “Pastoral and political activity alike seek to gather in this polyhedron the best of each. There is a place for the poor and their culture, their aspirations and their potential. Even people who can be considered dubious on account of their errors have something to offer which must not be overlooked. It is the convergence of peoples who, within the universal order, maintain their own individuality; it is the sum total of persons within a society which pursues the common good, which truly has a place for everyone.”

³¹ Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 268, He continues: “We realize once more that he wants us to draw closer to his beloved people. He takes us from the midst of his people and he sends us to his people; without this sense of belonging we cannot understand our deepest identity.”

³² Idem, 94. He continues: “A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. In neither case is one really concerned about Jesus Christ or others. These are manifestations of an anthropocentric immanentism. It is impossible to think that a genuine evangelizing thrust could emerge from these adulterated forms of Christianity.”

³³ Paul, Pope St John II, Novo Millenio Ineunte, Apostolic Letter, Jan 6^th 2001, 16Google Scholar. He continues: “A spirituality of communion implies also the ability to see what is positive in others, to welcome it and prize it as a gift from God: not only a gift for the brother or sister who has received it directly, but also as a ‘gift for me’”

³⁴ In certain spheres of religious life, authentic listening and authentic dialogue are termed ‘generative listening’ and ‘generative speaking’ in an attempt to emphasize the life-giving nature of such listening and dialogue as any exchange calls for more profound receptivity and consideration for the other.

³⁵ Gill Goulding IBVM, Creative Perseverance: Sustaining Life-giving Ministry in Today's Church, 138.

³⁶ Pope Benedict XVI Caritas in Veritate, 19

³⁷ Pope Francis, Address to Priests of the Diocese of Rome, Basilica of St. John Lateran, 7^th March 2019. He continued: “Sin disfigures, and we have a painful, humiliating experience of it when we ourselves or one of our brother priests or bishops falls into the bottomless pit of vice, of corruption, or even worse, of crimes that ruin the lives of others. I would like to share with you the pain and the unbearable suffering that the scandals — which fill newspapers throughout the world — cause in us and in the entire ecclesial body. It is evident that the true meaning of what is happening is to be found in the spirit of evil, in the Enemy, who acts with the pretence of being master of the world, as I said in the eucharistic liturgy at the end of the Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church (24 February 2019). Yet, let us not be disheartened! The Lord is purifying his Bride and is converting all of us to Him. He is making us experience the trial so that we may understand that without Him we are dust. He is saving us from hypocrisy, from the spirituality of appearances. . . . Our humble repentance, which remains silent amid tears before the monstrosity of the sin and the unfathomable greatness of God's forgiveness; this, this humble repentance is the beginning of our holiness”.

³⁸ “At its core, holiness is experiencing, in union with Christ, the mysteries of his life. In consists in uniting ourselves to the Lord's death and resurrection in a unique and personal way, constantly dying and rising anew with him. But it can also entail reproducing in our won lives various aspects of Jesus’ earthly life: his hidden life, his life in community, his closeness to the outcast, his poverty and other ways in which he showed his self-sacrificing love.” Francis, Pope, Gaudete et Exsultate, Apostolic Exhortation on the call to holiness in today's world, March 19^th 2019, 20.Google Scholar