The sexual abuse crisis has long-term consequences: not only on the victims and survivors of abuse, but also on the theological standing and balance of the Catholic Church throughout the world. Theological rethinking in light of the abuse crisis is necessary: not only from the lens of those who have suffered, but also from the lens of the changes caused by this global crisis in the history of the whole Catholic community. The article examines the consequences of the abuse crisis on different theological disciplines, with particular attention to the history of the Catholic Church, liturgy, ecclesiology of reform, and church–state relationships.

Synodality is a key term to understand Pope Francis’s ecclesiology. This article analyzes Francis’s use of synodality in the major documents, the speeches, and in the most important moment of his pontificates, especially in the Bishops’ Synods. The goal of this study is to highlight the promise and accomplishments of Francis’s synodality especially in terms of the conversion of the papacy into a listening primacy. This article also wants to raise some issues about the limits of his theology and practice of synodality in the global Catholic Church of today, and in particular whether there can be a synodal reform of the Church without new institutions of synodality.

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The COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis of the sense of eclesial unity and the global socio-political disruption, together with other factors, make this moment a eukairos akairos – a favorable and at the same time unfavorable moment – for the unfolding of the Synodal Process in the Catholic Church. The article outlines the ecclesial challenges and opportunities for the “Synodal Process 2021-2023”. Synodality is a different way of being the Church, not simply a new way of making decisions in the Church. However, kairos also means a moment of decision, not of waiting for something to happen and be accomplished automatically. For the Christian community, it also means a moment of possible division and refusal, and not of an ecclesial paradise. The synodal process takes place in a moment in which different challenges accumulate. KEYWORDS: Synodality. Kairos. Pandemic. Globalization.

The article focuses on the idea of the “margins” and “peripheries” of the Church, as recently referenced in the speeches of Pope Francis, and connects this idea with the ecclesiology of Vatican II's pastoral constitution, Gaudium et spes. A “rediscovery” of this constitution can inject new meaning into the sense of “marginality” of the Church in today's world. “Marginality” need not be a condition imposed from without, and should not be identified with irrelevance.