In this book the clergy sex abuse controversy is considered in light of three basic faith convictions that have been brought into clearer focus during and since the Second Vatican Council. The first guiding claim builds on Vatican II's teaching, now championed by Pope Francis, that through the anointing of the Spirit of God the baptized are gifted and summoned to live out the prophetic office of all the faithful people of God by actively participating in the life and mission of the church. This is achieved through personal and collective discernment by means of synodality, that is, as all the members of the church "we" are finding our way together. The prophetic gift and office guide this journey by providing a sense of the faith in all the faithful not only to recognize, receive, and witness to the Word of God, but just as important in our endeavor in this book, to heed, receive, and respond to the voice of the Spirit perceived in the laments of victims grieving their violations, their wounds, and the disfunctions at all levels of the church made manifest in the clergy sex abuse. This requires a deeper assessment of these issues provided by post-Vatican II clarifications of social and structural sin based on a realistic assessment of the sources of the laments and conflicts, the wounds and disfunctions in the church that provide the impetus and conditions for genuine church reform. These claims will provide the theological framework of the book.

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During the Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops, Francis described synodality as the new model of Church. He said that "a synodal Church is a Church that listens…in which everyone has something to learn." Listening reconfigures the whole process of interaction among all ecclesial subjects in a reciprocal and horizontal dynamics founded on the ecclesiology of the People of God. In this model, bishops should not only listen to the People of God but listen as part of the People of God. And what is heard should then find ecclesial channels and structures—or as Francis said, "concrete mediations"—that link it to ecclesial reforms.

Synodality represents a deepening of the ecclesiology of the People of God by which Francis opens a new phase in the reception of the Council. The book explores a new way of proceeding in the Church at all levels, and as "a constitutive dimension of the Church." This path calls for a reconfiguration in the relations, communicative dynamics, and structures of the current institutional model of the Church. We have the challenge to contribute to the building of this new way of being Church.

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The Christian Faith Explained in 50 Letters presents the Christian faith through the lens of a correspondence between the author and a young, unchurched married couple whose daughter, nine-year-old Anna, has decided on her own to become an active Catholic and receive the Eucharist for the first time with her classmates.

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Theology of the People explores first the origins of Argentine liberation theology—its distinctive characteristics, stages, status, and the figure of its main initiator, Lucio Gera. The book then presents the theology as a universal model of inculturation based on the wisdom and piety of the People of God incarnate in the peoples of the earth (locus theologicus, that is, source of theological reflection, according to Evangelii gaudium). Finally, it demonstrates its decisive influence on Francis, who not only takes it to a more universal level, but it extends it with creativity.

Theology of the People is one more fruit of the conciliar renewal and of the Latin American Church—from Medellín to Aparecida—and is an original contribution to the theological dialogue.

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