POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHALLENGE OF ECCLESIAL INTROVERSION: WHERE IS HE COMING FROM? WHERE IS HE GOING?

ABSTRACT: The presentation focuses on the reception of Pope Francis’s ecclesial reform and his persistent call for comprehensive pastoral conversion as outlined in Evangelii gaudium. The author discusses the reforms as rooted in the Church’s identity and mission to evangelize in the fullest sense of the word as understood in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and developed in the subsequent magisterium. The author addresses the toxic environment created by social media, a primary source of misinformation and fearmongering which leads to growing resistance and polarization among some church leaders and faithful. The resistance to accepting Pope Francis’s remarkable ecclesial vision for some sectors of the Church revolves around a harmful reaction which Pope St. John Paul II called ecclesial introversion. The unfamiliarity and even strangeness of his Latin Ameri- can and Jesuit roots and to the legacy of Medellín and the subsequent CELAM gatherings at least partially explain the challenge Francis’s bold reforms present to the global Church. KEYWORDS: Social Media. Pastoral Conversion. Ecclesial Introversion. Synodality. Ecclesial Discernment.