Poder e sinodalidade (em português)

Course Description

The course is centered on the reflection about the exercise of power and its impacts on the processes of constituting a new eclesiology, based on ecclesial relationships in light of Synodality. The call of Pope Francis for a Synodal Church is not merely an invitation to administrative reorganization, but a call to structural and existential conversion. At the heart of this process lies the need to revisit how power is understood, distributed, and exercised in the ecclesial body. The synodality requires that the Church cease to be seen as a strictly pyramidal structure to become a polyhedron of charisms, where authority does not override baptismal dignity, but serves it.

The linkage between Power and Synodality is the turning point for any real advancement. There is no synodality without a reevaluation of power dynamics. Power, when understood only as command and control (clericalism), acts as a force of resistance, smothering listening and marginalizing communal discernment. On the other hand, when power is reclaimed in its evangelical root as exousia (authority that gives life and serves), it becomes the engine of synodalization.

Course Professor

Alzirinha Rocha de Souza. Teóloga brasileira. Bacharel em Teologia pela Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Mestre em Teologia pela Universidad San Dámaso (Madrid) e Doutora em Teologia pela Université Catholique de Louvain (Bélgica). 

Post-Doctoral Internship at the Catholic University of Pernambuco (UNICAP- Recife). Theological research area: Practical Theology. Advisor in the Laity Commission of CNBB and the Spirituality Commission of Caritas Latin America. Coordinator of the Ecclesial Observatory Brazil. Faculty and researcher at the São Paulo Institute of Higher Education ITESP.