Latin American Ecclesial Assembly, what's next?

In this session, Mauricio López Oropeza presented us the new challenges that we face as a church currently.

Mauricio served as part of the listening committee of the Latin American Ecclesial Assembly and was also secretary of the Pan-Amazonian Network and currently collaborates in the section of the CELAM pastoral commissions.

In his talk, he shared with us the importance of delving into synodality as an essential method of our Church understood as the People of God and that although it is not a novelty of this Pontificate but has constituted the way of being and walking throughout the Centuries of the Church, yes it has been strongly promoted by Pope Francis with two previous synods such as that of the Family and that of young people and, now the so-called "Synod of Synodality" whose official name is the Synod of Bishops that It already started in October 2021 and is expected to end in October 2023.

A significant stage of this synod has been the Latin American Ecclesial Assembly, just closed on November 28 and where special attention was given to a process of listening to the People, made up, for the most part, of voices from lay men and women in such a way that strengthen the reform of Pope Francis to have and be a Church based on the mystical body of Christ which, in turn, is understood as a people and as a structure. Feeling and living as a people of God is as important as inserting oneself into the ecclesial structures formed for the service of this people.

Thus, in this process of learning to live synodality, a key point in the listening process is the leading role of the Community and the action of the Holy Spirit in it, which, in this Latin American Assembly, translated into 12 essential challenges that each community and each parish must discern in what to do and in its practice through the collaboration of religious and lay faithful who put it into practice.

The challenges are great, but the invitation is generous: to walk as a Church that dares to go to the peripheries because, as Pope Francis affirms: “the periphery is the center”.