Build communion with diversity, abbot tells cardinals before conclave

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The cardinals preparing to elect a new pope must strengthen communion in the Catholic Church, promoting a form of unity that has nothing to do with uniformity and everything to do with a common focus on Jesus, a Benedictine abbot told the College of Cardinals.

"The communion that the Holy Spirit builds in the community of believers is not the result of a flat and rigid uniformity. On the contrary, as the Apostle Paul describes using the metaphor of the body, the unity and communion that the church is called to live are a unity in plurality and a communion in diversity," said Benedictine Abbot Donato Ogliari.

The abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome was invited by the cardinals to offer a spiritual meditation April 29 at their general congregation meeting before the conclave begins May 7.

The rules for preparing a conclave require the cardinals to invite a cleric known for his "sound doctrine, wisdom and moral authority" to offer the meditation "on the problems facing the church at the time and on the need for careful discernment in choosing the new pope."

"Communion always remains one of the great challenges of the church, today as yesterday," the abbot told the cardinals. The challenge of building that kind of unity within the church and promoting it in the world must take place "if we want to be faithful to God's plan and respond to the profound expectations of the world," he said, quoting St. John Paul II.

The 2021-2024 process of the Synod of Bishops on synodality, a process many of the cardinals participated in, was a constructive step in that direction, Abbot Ogliari said.

Just over half of the cardinals who are eligible to enter the Sistine Chapel -- 68 of the 135 electors -- attended the October 2023 and October 2024 assemblies of the synod.

While there were "some perplexities" about the synod process and some issues that were set aside for deeper study, the abbot said, the synod "has produced flames of participation and renewal in every corner of the world."

"I believe this is a clear sign of the times, an action of the Spirit that invites us to promote, first of all, a fruitful connection" between the hierarchy and the laity "so that every baptized person can make his or her own contribution to the building of a church-koinonia" or church as communion.

A synodal church, he said, promotes an outreach and openness that allows the church to be less focused on its own affairs and more open to sharing the Gospel with the world.

A synodal church is needed, he said, in order for it to be, "according to a beautiful expression attributed to St. John XXIII, the 'village fountain,' the place where all people of goodwill can find, if not a rootedness in faith, at least a living and fresh word that gives them meaning and illuminates their path."

Abbot Ogliari told the cardinals it is obvious that today "the ecclesiology of communion and the sense of an ecclesial 'we' are being challenged."

"A prevailing individualism has permeated almost all the spaces of daily life, in which times and activities revolve mostly around the 'I,' with an inevitable depletion of meaningful interpersonal relationships," he said.

"This also has had an impact on the life of the church," the abbot said, which is precisely why "deepening the synodal process or journey -- which aims to revitalize communion and participation within the body ecclesial body -- can make the very mission of the church more effective in the various spheres of society, thanks to the virtuous circle that is created between communion, participation and mission."

Abbot Ogliari prayed that the cardinals would "let Christ be the north star and the compass of your expectations, your meetings, your dialogue and of the choices you are called to make."

He also prayed their decisions would be based on a desire to ensure that the church is truly built on and rooted in Christ, he said.

"The church rooted in Christ," he said, "is a church that is open, courageous and prophetic, abhors violent words and gestures, knows how to be a voice for the voiceless and, if necessary, also knows how to sing from a different hymn sheet while consistently pointing out the paths of justice, fraternity and peace."

"The church rooted in Christ is a church that is a teacher of fraternity, taught with words and gestures marked by mutual respect, dialogue, the culture of encounter and the building of bridges and not walls, as Pope Francis always invited us to do," he said.

"The church rooted in Christ," the abbot said, "is a church that shuns self-referentiality and that knows how to go beyond its own fences while also reaching out to those brothers and sisters in humanity who are not part of it and who experience the meaninglessness of life or are marked by the stigma of marginalization and exclusion."

Abbot Ogliari told the cardinals he liked to think of the Sistine Chapel where they will gather May 7 as the New Testament "upper room" where the disciples awaited the outpouring of the Holy Spirit after Jesus' resurrection.

"Even if the location of the conclave -- as the etymology of the word itself says -- is a place locked with a key, it actually will be wide open to the whole world if there prevails the freedom of the Spirit which, when it touches hearts and minds, rejuvenates, purifies and recreates."