A towel, not a throne: the Church Jesus envisioned

We should be grateful to Sister Lucía Caram for speaking out. Caram, is an Argentine-born Dominican nun who has lived at the Santa Clara monastery in Manresa, Spain, since 1994.

We should be grateful not only for what she says, but for daring to say it from within the Church, without disguising her views, without accommodating herself to narratives that soothe consciences and, above all, without confusing loyalty to the Church with silent obedience to its structures.

Her remarks on radical synodality — delivered Oct. 31, 2026, in a dialogue with journalist Jesús Bastante at the Fòrum Cristianisme (“Christianity Forum”) of the Valencian Community, held in Castellón, Spain — deserve more than applause: they deserve for us to stop and listen and, especially, to have the courage to take her words to their logical conclusion.

“Synodality” — a recurring term in recent Vatican discourse, referring to a Church that makes decisions through shared listening and consultation among clergy and laity rather than top-down hierarchy alone — was the centerpiece of a multi-year Vatican-wide consultation process convened by Pope Francis, which concluded with a final assembly in Rome in October 2024.

Because the Church does not need a cosmetic makeover; it needs a profound evangelical conversion. It does not need to change its language to seem more approachable, modernize its meetings, or produce more documents about shared responsibility.

It needs to ask why so many people who continue to believe in Jesus, love the Gospel, and find in it an extraordinary vision of humanity have distanced themselves from the Church as an institution.

Perhaps the answer is as uncomfortable as it is obvious: they have not stopped believing in Jesus; they have stopped recognizing themselves in the Church that claims to represent him.

What “radical” means — and doesn’t

Sister Lucía reminds us of something fundamental that, nevertheless, seems to have become revolutionary: Jesus did not found a religion to administer privileges, build untouchable hierarchies, or perpetuate centers of power.

His life was a constant breaking down of the religious and social barriers of his time. He approached those considered impure, shared meals with the despised, restored dignity to women, and placed at the center those whom society had pushed to the margins.

In her own words at the forum: “The word radical shouldn’t frighten us. Radical means returning to the roots. And our root is not power, nor rules, nor structures, nor traditions turned into impregnable fortresses. Our root is Jesus Christ.”

In the Gospel of Luke, we find a declaration that should be inscribed above the doors of every ecclesiastical palace: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor” (Luke 4:18).

He did not say he had come to protect an institution, defend a social position, or preserve authority. He came to liberate, heal, restore hope, and proclaim that another world was possible.

And here we encounter a contradiction we can no longer keep concealing: How can an institution proclaim liberation while maintaining mechanisms that generate dependency, inequality, and exclusion?

A history of borrowed power

History explains many of these contradictions, though it does not justify them.

When Christianity became linked to imperial power, particularly from the time of Constantine onward — the Roman emperor who legalized Christianity in 313 A.D. and whose patronage transformed it from a persecuted minority faith into the empire’s dominant religion — a process of transformation began that profoundly changed its organization and relationship with society.

The Church gradually adopted forms, titles, structures, and privileges characteristic of the political systems around it. Over the centuries, that logic of power came to coexist with — and far too often prevail over — the logic of evangelical service.

This is not to claim that the Vatican is literally the Roman Empire, but to recognize a historical legacy that deserves profound examination. It is paradoxical that a Church proclaiming the fundamental equality of all the baptized continues to reproduce such vertical structures of authority.

The problem is not Latin, the existence of an organization, or even the need for certain responsibilities. The problem arises when the structure ceases to serve the community and the community ends up serving the structure.

Clericalism isn’t only a clergy problem

And this mentality does not reside exclusively in bishops’ offices. It is also reproduced among us laypeople. There are laypeople who, after obtaining a position, responsibility, or small sphere of influence, end up behaving like fully fledged clerics without ordination.

This dynamic — laypeople replicating clerical attitudes of status and control — is what Pope Francis repeatedly termed “clericalism,” identifying it, rather than clergy itself, as one of the chief obstacles to Church reform throughout his pontificate.

They defend their own territory, reproduce patterns of obedience, demand submission, and become guardians of a system that may also keep them from experiencing the freedom of the Gospel.

Let us be clear: the goal is not to give laypeople positions of power so they can reproduce the same clerical behaviors we criticize, but to put an end to clericalism wherever it exists, both among those with ministerial responsibilities and among laypeople themselves.

We do not want minor offices, spheres of influence, or positions that feed personal prominence and new hierarchies. Nor do we want to become what we criticize.

We want a Church where no one considers themselves above anyone else, where responsibilities are exercised through service rather than privilege, and where shared responsibility, freedom, and everyone’s dignity arise from the same baptismal identity.

The Church is not the property of a hierarchy or of those who hold particular offices: it is the people of God, and no one should forget that we are all called to serve within it, not to dominate others.

Jesus was extraordinarily clear: “Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant” (Mark 10:43). And he also said: “You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers” (Matthew 23:8).

Which part of these words have we failed to understand? At what point did we manage to turn a vision of fraternity into a pyramid of obedience?

Who gets left at the door

The consequences are plain to see. Gay people, divorced people, women, young people, critical believers, and so many others have too often encountered closed doors where they expected welcome.

These are people who have not necessarily lost their faith, but who can no longer bear to participate in spaces where they are made to feel suspect, inferior, or somehow unworthy.

Caram herself put it this way at the forum: “I think of so many people who have drifted away, not because they stopped searching for God, but because they found closed doors, suspicious looks and judgment before embraces. Gay people, divorced people, families with complicated stories, young people looking for answers, and people who simply don’t fit our molds.”

We cannot keep blaming secularization on those who leave without asking ourselves what we have done to make them feel they no longer have reasons to stay.

A Church that is more scandalized by questions than by injustice, more by differences than by poverty, and more by the loss of influence than by human suffering urgently needs to reconsider its priorities.

From listening to deciding

Pope Francis opened important paths by speaking of a Church that goes forth, a field hospital, and synodality.

These were recurring images in Francis’s teaching: the “Church that goes forth” — from his 2013 apostolic exhortationEvangelii Gaudium— described a Church that leaves its own institutional comfort to meet people where they are; the “field hospital” image, which he used from early in his pontificate, described a Church meant to treat wounds and illness first, before worrying about doctrine and rules.

But synodality cannot become another attractive phrase decorating documents while fundamental decisions remain concentrated in the same hands. Listening is not the same as allowing people to speak.

Participating is not the same as deciding. And walking together does not mean that some always set the course while the rest merely follow.

Caram made the same point to Bastante: “A Church that listens to everyone, but where the same few always decide, is not synodal: it is a Church that has learned to organize meetings, but has not yet learned to share responsibilities.”

She also spoke directly to the Church’s new leadership: “Now, with Leo XIV, we have the challenge of consolidating the paths that have opened, deepening shared responsibility, and turning synodality into reality.”

That is why thanking Sister Lucía Caram for her courage also means insisting that her words not be reduced to a symbolic gesture.

We need profound changes that translate into action, not more declarations of good intentions.

We need a Church where women can participate fully in decision-making, where the poor are not used as talking points in institutional speeches, and where no one has to surrender their dignity, hide who they are, or abandon their conscience in order to feel welcome.

We do not need promises of a different Church; we need to start building one.

A towel, not a throne

The washing of the feet (John 13:1–15) should be much more than a Holy Thursday ritual. It is a way of understanding community, authority, and human relationships. Jesus kneels. He does not create a sacred distance between himself and others. He demands no privileges. He serves.

Perhaps the time has come to ask ourselves whether we are willing to do the same.

Thank you, Sister Lucía, for reminding us that loyalty to Jesus may require us to be deeply critical of certain ways of being Church.

Because loving the Church does not mean justifying everything, remaining silent in the face of its contradictions, or protecting its structures at any cost. Sometimes, precisely because we love it, we must denounce whatever distances it from its reason for being.

The Church does not need to regain the power it has lost. It needs to regain the credibility it loses every time it contradicts what it proclaims. It does not need more defenders of its privileges, but more people willing to live the Gospel.

It does not need subjects; it needs brothers and sisters. It does not need functionaries of the sacred; it needs free men and women capable of serving, questioning, accompanying, and loving.

Because, in the end, the question is not how many people we manage to keep inside our churches, how many positions we retain, or how much authority our societies recognize.

The question is much simpler and much more demanding: Would Jesus today find in our communities the same place he offered to the last, to women, to the excluded, and to those who had no place in the official religion of his time?

If the answer makes us uncomfortable, perhaps that is precisely where our conversion must begin.

Less power and more Gospel. Less hierarchy turned into privilege and more fraternity. Less concern with preserving the Church and more willingness to give ourselves.

Because Jesus did not call us to defend an institution at any cost, but to build a world where no one is excluded from love.

This is a translated and edited version of the column that first appeared on Religion Digital and has been republished with permission. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of Global Catholic.

https://www.religiondigital.org/dios_en_la_frontera/sor-lucia-caram-fiel-jesus_132_1471810.html