In his encyclical Dilexit nos (“He loved us”), published on October 24, Pope Francis proposes a return to the fundamentals of the Catholic faith.
The text is a wide-ranging reflection on “the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ.” After two social encyclicals, Fratelli tutti and Laudato si', this time the Argentine pontiff wrote a spiritual text based on a traditional devotion.
Drawing extensively on the teachings of the popes and numerous saints, such as Thérèse de Lisieux and Charles de Foucauld, the Pope develops in this 40-page text a reflection on the need for Christians to make their hearts open to contemplate and receive God's love.
“In union with Christ, amid the ruins we have left in this world by our sins, we are called to build a new civilization of love. That is what it means to make reparation as the heart of Christ would have us do,” says the head of the Catholic Church.
Two atypical letters for a more open approach to literature and history
The Pope surprised everyone by publishing a Letter “On the Role of Literature in Formation” on Sunday, August 4, in the midst of the summer torpor. In this document, said to have been inspired by the Italian Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, the Pope returns to “the value of reading novels and poems as part of one’s path to personal maturity,” for priests and seminarians but also, more broadly, for “all Christians.”
Mentioning authors such as Proust and Cocteau, he insists that Christian formation is not only a matter of studying the classics of theology or philosophy. It also requires an open approach to literature in all its forms, in order to fully integrate imagination and emotions in the construction of each individual. This text provides a better understanding of the intellectual formation of the Argentine pontiff, who looks back on his own experience as a teacher of literature during his early years as a Jesuit.
The Pope completes this reflection with a more academic Letter on the Renewal of the Study of Church History, published on November 21. In this text, entrusted to the Dicastery for the Clergy, the Pope calls for the promotion of “a genuine sense of history” in the training of seminarians.
The aim is to help priests “understand reality as it is and not as we imagine or would prefer reality to be,” he explains.
Norms on apparitions: Putting an end to confusion about supernatural phenomena
On May 17, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith promulgated “Norms for proceeding in the discernment of alleged supernatural phenomena.” This text aims to put an end to a certain opacity in Vatican procedures concerning mystical or supernatural phenomena, in order to better guide the faithful.
Thanks to a new procedure and a stricter evaluation, the Holy See can, for example, declare that a fact is not supernatural — but never vice versa — or grant it a “nihil obstat” after noting that the fact bears good fruit and has no critically dangerous aspects.
The method, which also makes it possible to separate the wheat from the chaff in the same phenomenon, has been used on numerous occasions since its introduction, most notably in the case of the Medjugorje shrine on September 19. In the case of the Marian apparitions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Holy See authorized the devotion, but placed it under supervision, monitoring the actions of the “visionaries.”
The synod's final document, a symbol of the increasing responsibility of lay people
On the evening of October 26, the 368 members of the Synod assembly on synodality approved the Final Document of a process begun in 2021. For the first time, voting rights had been granted to lay people. Approved “expressly” by the Pope, the document immediately became part of his magisterium. Although the text is not prescriptive, it lays the foundations for greater decentralization in the Catholic Church.
After a month of debate, the members put forward numerous proposals for increasing lay responsibility in the governance of parishes and dioceses. They also called for the establishment of a culture of transparency to combat abuses. Proof of the determination of some to pursue reflection beyond the Synod on delicate themes, the assembly obtained the addition of a paragraph assuring that “the question of women's access to the diaconal ministry remains open.”
The Bull that sets the course for Jubilee 2025
On May 9, Pope Francis' Bull of Indiction, setting the course for the Great Jubilee 2025, was solemnly published at a ceremony in front of the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica. In this 10-page text, the head of the Catholic Church sets the spiritual course for this Holy Year dedicated to the theme of hope.
Addressing the world, he calls on the international community to cancel the debt of poor countries — pointing out that rich countries owe them an “ecological debt.” He calls for the creation of a “global fund” to eradicate hunger, to be financed with part of the money currently used for armaments. More unexpectedly, the 266th pope also calls for a solution to the demographic crisis in the West, expressing concern at the “alarming decline in the birthrate.”
Dignitas infinita, a clarification on gender, surrogate motherhood, and euthanasia
Dignitas infinita is the first statement from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith since Fiducia supplicans (the December 2023 text on blessings for those in irregular unions). The document's goal is to clarify the Church's position on thorny societal issues. Published on April 8, it proposes a list of “serious violations of human dignity” such as “gender theory,” which advocates a “society without sexual differences,” sex reassignment (except in the case of genital anomaly), surrogate motherhood (in which the child “becomes a mere object”), and euthanasia. The DDF also warns of Internet-related violence, feminicide, and the marginalization of disabled people.
A redefinition of the pope's ministry as Bishop of Rome
“The Bishop of Rome - Primacy and Synodality in the Ecumenical Dialogues and in the Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint": this is the title of an ambitious “study document” published by the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity on June 13, offering the first general synthesis since the Second Vatican Council on the sensitive subject of the pope's place in the Christian world.
The document calls for a reinterpretation of the dogma of papal infallibility, and for defining the pope first and foremost as the Bishop of Rome. “A greater accent on the exercise of the ministry of the pope in his own particular Church, the diocese of Rome, would highlight the episcopal ministry he shares with his brother bishops, and renew the image of the papacy,” the document points out, recalling the debates and perceptions of the different Churches on this delicate question of the primacy of the bishop of Rome.