Document final — Les jeunes

Pope Francis often reminds us that this is not possible without a serious journey of conversion. We are aware that it is not just a question of starting up new activities, nor do we want to write “vast apostolic projects, meticulously planned, just like defeated generals” (Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 96). We know that in order to be credible, we must live a reform of the Church, which implies purification of the heart and changes of style. The Church must truly allow herself to take on the form of the Eucharist, which she celebrates as the source and summit of her life – the form of a loaf made up of many grains and broken for the life of the world. The fruit of this Synod, the choice that the Spirit has inspired in us through listening and discernment, is to walk with the young, going out towards everyone, so as to bear witness to the love of God. We could describe this process by speaking of synodality for mission, or missionary synodality: “Making a synodal Church a reality is an indispensable precondition for a new missionary energy that will involve the entire People of God.”^{1International Theological Commission, Synodality in the life and mission of the Church, 2 March 2018, §9. The document illustrates, moreover, the nature of synodality in these terms: “It is possible to go deeper into the theology of synodality on the basis of the doctrine of the sensus fidei of the People of God and the sacramental collegiality of the episcopate in hierarchical communion with the Bishop of Rome. This ecclesiological vision invites us to articulate synodal communion in terms of ‘all’, ‘some’ and ‘one’. On different levels and in different forms, as local Churches, regional groupings of local Churches and the universal Church, synodality involves the exercise of the sensus fidei of the universitas fidelium (all), the ministry of leadership of the College of Bishops, each one with his presbyterium (some), and the ministry of unity of the Bishop of Rome (one). The dynamic of synodality thus joins the communitarian aspect which includes the whole People of God, the collegial dimension that is part of the exercise of episcopal ministry, and the primatial ministry of the Bishop of Rome. This correlation promotes that singularis conspiratio between the faithful and their Pastors, which is an icon of the eternal conspiratio that is lived within the Trinity” (§64).}We are dealing here with a prophecy of the Second Vatican Council, which we have yet to absorb in all its profundity and to develop in its daily implications, as Pope Francis reminds us when he says: “It is precisely this path ofsynodality which God expects of the Church of the third millennium” (Francis, Address for the Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015). We are convinced that this choice, a fruit of prayer and debate, will allow the Church, by God’s grace, to be and to appear more clearly as the “youth of the world”. Chapter I The Missionary Synodality of the Church A constitutive dynamism