Calling the Second Vatican Council the “Map for the Journey Ahead,” Apostolic Nuncio Cardinal Christophe Pierre urged the U.S. bishops gathered in Baltimore for their Fall General Assembly to walk in a synodal spirit, in continuity with Vatican II, and warned against retrenchment amid cultural and political turbulence. Cardinal Pierre, who serves as the pope’s representative to the Church in the United States, turns 80 in January — making this likely his final plenary assembly before retirement.
In the nuncio’s speech, the theme of which was “Where have we been, and where are we going,” Pierre urged educational communities to ask themselves this critical question — an essential part of Christian discernment and the handing on of our identity from age to age. Such reflection inspires the fortitude and endurance required to live a dynamic faith in an ideologically charged environment.
Unlike many other councils in the Church’s history, the documents and vision of Vatican II were not meant primarily to address issues simply of the time in which the Council was called. Rather, in Pierre’s words, “The vision of the Council was a vision for the future — a prophetic orientation toward a world that was only beginning to take shape,” since “many of the realities that the Council intuited had not yet manifested themselves in the life of the world or of the Church.”
The dangers in rejecting this vision are twofold: one is capitulation; the other is knowing the faith so poorly, or clinging to outdated modes, that one cannot engage the world confidently — retreating into insularity or responding to the world with antagonism or suspicion. The alternative, Pierre implied, is a mature openness grounded in understanding the faith, found by trusting the Church in its prophetic charting of the road ahead.
Asking this question about where we’ve been and where we’re going, is “something that every bishop must do when thinking about the Church entrusted to his care,” Pierre said.
Vatican II remains the key, and the “guiding light,” Pierre insisted, “to understanding what kind of Church we are called to be today, and the reference point for discerning where we are headed,” echoing Pope Leo XIV’s first address to the College of Cardinals as pope. The pope, in this address two days after his election, told the cardinals: “I would like us to renew together today our complete commitment to the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council,” especially as “masterfully and concretely set forth” in Francis’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.
Pierre praised Pope Leo for extending conciliar renewal and Pope Francis’s reforms into a new century through documents like Drawing New Maps of Hope and Dilexi Te. The newer of these two documents, issued on the 60th anniversary of Gravissimum Educationis from Vatican II, offers timely guidance, situating, in Leo’s words, “at the very heart of evangelization — the concrete way in which the Gospel becomes an educational gesture, a relationship, a culture.”
The Council, Pierre made clear, offered us “not a new faith, but a new way of describing and living the one faith in the modern world. As such, it is a reliable guide for ecclesial discernment in this time of epochal change.”
“When the Council Fathers issued those texts,” Pierre added, “the churches were still full; the effects of secularization had not yet become deeply visible. Many of the realities that the Council intuited had not yet manifested themselves in the life of the world or of the Church.
“For this reason, the Council’s documents were not fully understood in their time. They were not a description of where the Church stood, but a map drawn for the territory into which she was being sent. Today, that territory is our daily experience. We now inhabit the world that the Council foresaw — a world marked by profound cultural shifts, technological change, and a secularized mindset that challenges faith at its roots. Now is the time to unfold the Council’s map and walk its path — to rediscover in those texts the light and courage needed to navigate this moment with fidelity and creativity,” the nuncio pointed out.
He continued, “From this perspective, the vision of the Council finds continuity in the magisterium of all the popes since then, who call us to embody the missionary and pastoral dynamism that Vatican II anticipated.” Thus, “Their pontificates are not a departure from the conciliar spirit but its maturation — a reminder that renewal is always a work of the Spirit, unfolding in time and responding to the concrete realities of the world in which the Church lives and evangelizes.”
Pierre recalled that when Pope Francis was asked about the Third Vatican Council, he replied that now was not the right time, since the Second Vatican Council is still being implemented in the life of the Church. Pierre noted that Pope Francis’s documents, Evangelii Gaudium, were in many ways the clearest illustration of the vision of Vatican II, reflecting “a missionary Church, joyful and outward-looking, a community that builds fraternity in a divided world.”
Dilexi Te, the new encyclical of Pope Leo, continues this vision of Pope Francis, who wrote much of the document before his death, situating the preferential option for the poor at the center of the Council’s vision, further pointing out our priorities in the way we are called to live out the Gospel. And like Leo XIII, who illuminated the Church’s social doctrine for a new century, upholding the rights of workers and promoting the dignity of man, so Leo continues this tradition of his namesake, upholding the dignity of the “least of these” (Matt. 25:40).
The vitality of the Church’s ministry, however, will suffer when divisions fracture our witness. Polarization and tribalism, Pierre notes, act contrary to the necessary unity and cohesion demanded by the very term signifying the Church’s social existence — the Body of Christ.
The synodal witness of the Church is a potent remedy to this fragmentation, making communion concrete and incorporating the results of dialogue as a shared discernment that allows mission to be pursued in unity. Such a synodal Church will serve as a prophetic witness in a divided world.
Pierre concluded, “If we embrace this full inheritance of Vatican II — the educational, pastoral, and social dimensions alike — the Church in the United States can continue to be what she has so often been: a leaven within this nation, a sign of hope that transcends division, and a servant of the common good grounded in the dignity of every human being.”
Image: Screenshot, USCCB YouTube Channel
Andrew Likoudis is a graduate of Towson University with a degree in communication studies, an entrepreneur, and founder of the Likoudis Legacy Foundation, an ecumenical initiative dedicated to advancing theological scholarship and fostering Christian unity. He is an associate member of the Society for Catholic Liturgy, serves on the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Lay Pastoral Council, and has been a fellow with Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses and Johns Hopkins University’s Economics Department. He has edited numerous volumes on the papacy and Catholic ecclesiology, most recently Faith in Crisis: Critical Dialogues in Catholic Traditionalism, Church Authority, and Reform (En Route Books, 2025), with a foreword by Rocco Buttiglione. His writing has appeared in the National Catholic Register, Catholic Review, Philosophy Now, and other outlets.
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