Archbishop of Salzburg

“Building bridges and overcoming rifts”

Archbishop Franz Lackner of Salzburg.

(Bild: Klemens Groh)

Salzburg's Archbishop Franz Lackner is currently in Rome at the second plenary assembly of the World Synod of Bishops. In the "Eternal City", he wrote a guest commentary for the readers of "Krone".

Dear readers of the "Krone",

I am writing these lines from the "Eternal City" of Rome, where I am currently attending the second plenary assembly of the World Synod of Bishops. Perhaps this topic will not mean much to you, or it will seem quite unimportant. The Church, you might think, is simply concerned with itself. But what happens here can have far-reaching consequences, including for our society.

The term "synod" comes from the Greek and means something like "common path". In our Eastern, Orthodox sister churches, synods are regular governing bodies; in the Catholic West, the Synod of Bishops has existed as an advisory body to the Pope since the 1960s. Being on the path together is something that is imposed on us as a kind of "professional ethos". With the current synod, Pope Francis has given us the task of reflecting on how we as a church can follow this ethos - reflecting on what "synodality" actually means and what it demands of us.

St. Peter's Square in Rome

(Bild: flickr.com/Diego Cambiaso)

We are all familiar with cases in which we disagree fundamentally with our fellow human beings, and it is not uncommon for such differences of opinion to lead to arguments, and therefore even to the breakdown of a relationship or, in the very worst form, to war. We are not immune to this in our private lives, not in politics, and especially not in the church. Synodality, however, offers us a way out. I have been working with the method of listening circles for three years. We meet in small groups, here in Rome, with Christians from all continents. Individual points of view are presented alternately with phases of silence; only after everything has been heard and internalized in silence and elements of prayerful reflection is there discussion, and the attempt is always made never to see one's own opinion as final. The hope and expectation is that, through silence and listening, a process will be set in motion in which we can simply place the most diverse points of view next to each other, where we can finally discuss them in the knowledge that none of us can ever be 100 percent right and that we are closer to each other than we originally thought. Yes, that the realization matures: despite our differences, we all have a common task.

It seems to me that this shared, conscious silence and listening would not only be good for the church. It would help a world that is scarred by war in so many places; it would help our country to overcome the divisions and rifts of recent years, especially now, when we are hoping for a stable government that upholds democracy and human rights in such a politically complex situation. If we remain aware that we are all only managing partial truths, that we must all always be both capable of docking and in need of supplementation, I hope that we can build bridges to each other - as a church, as a country, as humanity.

So I greet you all with my warmest blessings from Rome.

Franz Lackner,

Archbishop of Salzburg