What the Church of the future will be like: a prophecy by Joseph Ratzinger
“It will be a more spiritual Church, which will not arrogate to itself a political mandate by flirting now with the left and now with the right. It will do this with difficulty. In fact, the process of crystallization and clarification will make it poor, will make it become a Church of the little ones, the process will be long and tiring, because sectarian narrow-mindedness and pompous stubbornness will have to be eliminated. One might predict that all this will take time. The process will be long and tiring, as was the road from false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution – when a bishop could be considered clever if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was not at all certain – to 19th century renovation. But after the test of these divisions, great strength will emerge from an internalized and simplified Church. Men who live in a totally programmed world will experience unspeakable loneliness. If they have completely lost the sense of God, they will feel all the horror of their poverty. And they will then discover the small community of believers as something totally new: they will discover it as a hope for themselves, the answer they had always sought in secret.
It seems certain to me that very difficult times are preparing for the Church. Her real crisis has just begun. We have to deal with major upheavals. But I am also very certain of what will remain in the end: not the Church of political worship, which is already dead, but the Church of faith. Of course it will no longer be the dominant social force to the extent it was until recently. But the Church will experience a new flowering and will appear as man’s home, where one can find life and hope beyond death.” (From a prophetic speech on the future of the Church on Christmas Day 1969 by the future Pope Ratzinger).
The future Church that Ratzinger describes seems to be the one that Pope Francis is reshaping, poor, essential and spiritual, and the small community of believers could be compared to that of the apostles of Mary who believe in the apparitions of Medjugorje and will be a point of reference for those who seek refuge during the test? I would like your comment Father Livio. Good evening and may the Lord give you strength and protection.
Andrea from Genoa
Dear Andrea,
this prophecy of Ratzinger has undoubtedly hit the mark on some features of a future which however we can know in its entirety through the third secret of Fatima. The purification of the Church will take place through a great persecution, during which the world without God will collapse and the Heart of Mary will triumph.
It is in the time of the ten secrets that all this will happen and it will be up to us to have the courage of the martyrs and confessors of the faith. Pope John Paul II had already said all this in Fulda, Germany in 1980, but his words have fallen into oblivion. Now we realize how true they were.
