Rome – Bishops ordained in the last two years gathered in Rome on 8 September 2026, in the Aula Magna of the Pontifical Urbaniana University, for a formation course, hearing addresses from two dicasteries closely involved in the life of the clergy and of young Churches: Cardinal Lazzaro You Heung Sik, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy, who spoke on “Priestly Formation in Today’s Context,” and Archbishop Fortunatus Nwachukwu, Secretary of the Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches of the Dicastery for Evangelization, who presented “At the Service of Priestly Formation in a Synodal Church. The Church of the Sheaves.”
In the absence of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who had to return to the Philippines following the recent death of his father, Archbishop Nwachukwu greeted the bishops on his behalf. As Secretary, he briefly presented the Dicastery and its role in formation.”
The heart of his address was devoted to a paradigm the Dicastery is developing for formation in these territories. Local clergy and religious, he said, have gradually taken up “from the Western missionaries the reins of evangelization,” and “most recently… are beginning to bring their contribution to the universal Church in a spirit of synodality. That is why we are currently developing a framework for evangelization in the synodal Church which we call ‘The Church of the Sheaves.'”
“The Church of the Sheaves,” he said, “is an ecclesiological paradigm drawn from the words of Psalm 126,” one of the Psalms of Ascent sung by pilgrims to Jerusalem. Quoting the final verse in the Grail translation, “a modern, liturgically approved translation of the Psalms, faithful to the Hebrew text and used for communal prayer in the Divine Office”, he said : “They go out, they go out, full of tears, carrying seed for sowing; They come back, they come back full of songs, carrying their sheaves.”
The missionaries’ sowing
Commenting on the image, the Archbishop said: “We see in the image of those who go out full of tears the missionaries who brought the Gospel to our territories. They left their comfort zones and environments, the warmth of their families, peers, friends, and loved ones and went to unknown mission territories.” Because most of them “did not think of coming home again,” he observed, “in a sense, their going was like a dying. In fact, many of them died only a few months after their arrival in the mission territories. They sacrificed everything, including their lives.” Yet “they did not go empty-handed but carried with them the seeds of the Gospel to be sown in new mission territories.”
Turning to the second half of the verse, Archbishop Nwachukwu said: “The joyful news is that their efforts and sacrifices were not in vain. The seeds they sowed have given rise to plants which are now flourishing and bearing abundant fruits, the sheaves. We are now at the moment of the harvest, the bringing home of the sheaves. Our Dicastery has the duty to keep watering what was planted by the missionaries, and to offer support in the harvest and bringing home of the sheaves to the universal Church.”
The time of harvest
Fortunatus Nwachukwu noted that “someone has suggested that if the Church in the mission territories is called the Church of the sheaves, then that in the West, which sent out the missionaries, should also be called the Church of the seeds.” The project, he explained, “is being developed by our Dicastery in collaboration with the Centre for World Catholicism of DePaul University in the USA, our own Urbaniana University and a wide network of university professors, mainly theologians,” aimed at “preparing the sheaves for their welcome into the family of the Universal Church and the local churches in the West.” A “first global conference,” he announced, “is foreseen here at our University next month.”
A past to honor, not to erase
Speaking both as an official of the Dicastery and, in his own words, “part of the sheaves myself,” the Archbishop expressed gratitude to the Churches that sent missionaries, “heroes of our faith” who “sacrificed the most beautiful moments of their youth, including their very lives,” for values “on which Europe as we know it has been built.” He concluded with a pointed remark on current tensions within the Church: “Unfortunately, sometimes when some people from our local Churches today insist on remaining faithful to those teachings of the missionaries, they are tagged as conservatives. Many in the West want them to abandon the teachings received from the missionaries from the West, to embrace new and untested values that are taught by persons who do not and cannot stand any comparison with the missionaries in their conviction and fraternal solidarity. We cannot abandon our heritage or neglect the past, since the future is rooted in it. Please, help us to honour the memories of your heroic brothers and sisters, the missionaries, also by offering a warm welcome to the fruits of their sacrifices, in the Church of the sheaves.”
The risk of programs that turn into “Blah Blah Blah”
Earlier, Cardinal You Heung Sik had opened his own address by recalling his years as a young bishop in Daejeon, South Korea, appointed Coadjutor by Pope Saint John Paul II in 2003. Facing “situations that were unfamiliar to me, at times painful and delicate,” he said he had set himself three priorities that still guide him: “being, not doing,” that is, living daily as “a disciple of Jesus”; “focusing on relationships” with collaborators, priests and fellow bishops rather than on activities, since this “opens wide the doors to what matters most: experiencing the Kingdom of God”; and “keeping our eyes fixed on the one Teacher: the Crucified and Risen One.” Without this grounding in the Gospel, he warned, “everything else, including the wonderful programme of a synodal and missionary Church, risks remaining ‘blah blah’: words, programmes and activities that do not change the hearts of people and the life of communities.”
Lazzaro You then focused on synodality, recalling that the 2016 Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis already insists on the “communal dimension” of formation, common life in the seminary and “presbyteral communion” being, together with spirituality, “the training ground for becoming ever more missionary disciples, servants of our brothers and sisters, going beyond the risks of individualism and clericalism.” This orientation, he explained, was carried further by the Synod on Synodality, whose Final Document called for the formation of candidates to be shaped “in a synodal style,” requiring, among other things, “a significant presence of women,” “an insertion into the daily life of communities,” “education in collaborating with everyone in the Church,” “formation for ecclesial discernment,” and “a passion for the missio ad gentes.” On this basis, Synod Study Group 4, tasked by Pope Francis with reviewing the Ratio “from a synodal and missionary perspective,” chose not to rewrite the document but to draft a Preliminary Document setting out “the relational identity of ordained ministers in a synodal missionary Church,” published last March together with 26 examples of good practice already at work around the world, including, he noted, “the involvement of women in the formation team itself.” He also recalled the origin of the 2024 International Congress for the Ongoing Formation of Priests: a brother bishop had once told him, “Now you are responsible for ensuring that all the priests of the world are happy.”
Cardinal You Heung Sik linked this trajectory to Pope Leo XIV’s recent Apostolic Letter “Una fedeltà che genera futuro,” issued for the 60th anniversary of the conciliar decrees Optatam totius and Presbyterorum Ordinis, noting that two of its five chapters are devoted to “Fidelity and fraternity” and “Fidelity and synodality.” He quoted the Pope’s question, “How, indeed, could we ministers be builders of living communities if an effective and sincere fraternity did not reign first of all among us?”, and his call for presbyters to move beyond “the model of an exclusive leadership, which leads to the centralization of pastoral life and the burden of all responsibilities being placed on him alone,” toward “an increasingly collegial leadership, through the cooperation of presbyters, deacons and the whole People of God…”
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