About the Pope: An Insider’s Reflection on the Synod on Synodality

Editor’s note: Tricia C. Bruce, Ph.D., is an IACS Affiliated Research Scholar and sociologist of religion with expertise in organizational, attitudinal, and generational change. She was appointed by Pope Francis as a consultor to the General Secretariat of the Synod, a body of bishops and other appointees helping prepare and implement themes identified within the Synod on Synodality — the multi-year, global conversation discerning future directions in the global Catholic Church. Her reflection below is the third in a four-part series. Read Part One: “All in the Hall” and Part Two: “Where Women Sit“

Prior to my role as Consultor to the Vatican’s General Secretariat of the Synod, the closest I’d been to Pope Francis was via bobblehead proxy. Day after day, he stood nearby on my desk, smiling nonstop, nodding frenetically, hand outstretched, waving. A stalwart supporter, albeit a bit stiff.

For all the Church’s talk about a “common priesthood” shared by all the baptized, it assuredly coexists with something akin to superhero fandom. It isn’t lay people or priests or bishops and cardinals that people most ask me about from my time at the Vatican. It’s the Pope. And it’s true that I, myself, was irrationally enthusiastic about meeting the inspirational 87-year-old man, seemingly larger than life – the epicenter of a decidedly hierarchical Church.

I was with Pope Francis within hours of arriving to Rome. There he was, across the Synod Hall, IRL. Real Pope Francis turned out to be taller than six inches and less frenzied with the nodding. His smiles intermixed pensive contemplation. He embodied his years. But he was vibrant and wholly alive, nonetheless. Present. Engaged. Spirited.

When I introduced myself to him formally a couple days later, I thanked him for including the perspective of social science into the process of synodality. My Spanish was rusty.

Everything and everyone around the Pope upheld the notion that he was special. His spot at an elevated roundtable, front-and-center. The lines to shake his hand during breaks. The way everyone and everything stopped when he spoke. And while the allure never wore off, I came to know Pope Francis as equally human, too. Sometimes tired, occasionally impatient, holding to humor and connection. Imperfect. I don’t know why that felt surprising, but it’s not often that you meet and interact with your superheroes in, well, prolonged committee meetings.

You can’t talk about change in Catholicism without talking about power and hierarchy. I’ve learned this again and again as a sociologist of religion. Power limits Catholics’ ability to secure or stop the suppression of “parish” status, for one, a designation enabled through canon law and decreed by a bishop whose own authority comes from the Pope. Felt inefficacy can occasion months-long vigils imploring bishops to change their mind. Even in independent and religiously plural western contexts like the United States, agency doesn’t render power insignificant. Catholics don’t get an equal say in decisions about the Church, on parishes or otherwise.

The thing is, power is everywhere – power is which songs appear in the hymnal, who speaks the homily, who can take Eucharist, who baptizes the baby. Power is who wears a red hat or a pink hat or a white hat—or no hat — in the Synod Hall.

Parts of synodality diffused power as the Church had long come to know it. Lay people and bishops sitting at the same roundtable, speaking into the same issues. Prolonged dialogue around “decision-taking” and “decision-making,” the former born of hierarchical structures and long-standing tradition, the latter summoned toward listening and compulsory consultation.

But synodality exposed the struggle to (re)think power, too. Words like “co-responsibility” combined with modifiers like “differentiated” – reifying how different people and positions necessarily participate differently. = Hierarchy.

Sociologists distinguish the kind of power embedded in hierarchy as “legitimate” power. Or, more accurately, power accepted as legitimate. Power through authority.

The Pope’s own power loomed large. It mattered that he relegated to study groups topics deemed too controversial or complex to consider in the full assembly. It mattered that he characterized the question of women deacons as not yet “mature.” It mattered that he insisted that each paragraph in the final document be voted upon, its tallies publicized. And, in the end, it mattered that he approved the final document as “part of the ordinary Magisterium of the Successor of Peter,” a “form of exercise of the authentic teaching of the Bishop of Rome.”

Synodality’s power was conditioned on that of the Pope.

Power manifested into hierarchy is not altogether incompatible with co-responsibility and shared decision-making. Living as community and getting things done requires both leaders and followers.

But it can get kinda awkward.

It might explain why bobblehead Pope Francis, here again with me now, stays hyper-alert, responsive to any move around him, perma-smiling.

Stay tuned for the fourth post in this four-part series. To learn more about Dr. Bruce and her work, visit: https://triciabruce.com/