For the Pope, it is based on a "correct vision of the Church" in which the laity and clerics are invested as baptized people in the service of the mission.

As part of the Synod on the Church’s future, the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life organised an international congress for the heads of episcopal commissions for the laity on the theme "Pastors and lay faithful called to walk together". More than 200 people - half of them lay people - from all over the world came to Rome for the event, which took place from 16^th to 18^th February.

During the audience, the Pope presented his dream of an "integral ecclesiology" where laity and clergy would move forward together and not in an autonomous or parallel way.

Separation is the "most serious" temptation of the moment.

He began by painting a bleak picture of a Church where "clergy is separated from laity", "consecrated persons from clergy and faithful", "intellectual faith of certain elites from popular faith", "Roman Curia is separated from particular Churches", "bishops from priests", "young people from the elderly" or "spouses and families little involved in community life" and finally "charismatic movements are separated from parishes". For the Pope, this trend is the "most serious" temptation of the moment.

On the contrary, it is a question of rediscovering a unity oriented towards the mission. In order to break down this feeling of "classes" in the Church, the Pope invited us to consider each of its members not according to his or her title or function, but as a "baptised person". He then pointed out that in the New Testament the word "lay" does not appear. "We speak of believers, disciples, brothers, saints," he noted.

For him, it is therefore necessary to go back to the origins and the essentials: "We are baptised, Christians, disciples of Jesus. Everything else is secondary". Improvising, the Pope made the assembly smile: "But, Father, even a priest? - Yes, it is secondary - even a bishop? - Yes, it's secondary - Even a cardinal? - It's secondary.

The laity are not "guests".

In this way, the Pope wanted to cut short the rumours that the rise in power of the laity was a response to the demands of the contemporary world.

"The need to value the laity does not depend on any theological novelty, nor even on functional requirements linked to the reduction in the number of priests; nor does it derive from categorical demands aimed at granting revenge to those who have been side-lined in the past", he affirmed, adding that it was actually based on "a correct vision of the Church". "The lay faithful are not guests in the Church, they are at home", he insisted again, also stressing the importance of valuing the place of women.

In a second step, he detailed the places where the collaboration between laity and clerics should take place: catechesis and formation, government structure, administration of goods, planning and implementation of pastoral programmes, etc. Lay people should also be able to "help in the spiritual accompaniment of other lay people and contribute to the formation of seminarians and religious," Pope Francis listed.

To establish this culture, the Pope said priests should be trained, from the seminary onwards, in daily and ordinary collaboration with the laity. The challenge is that this "living communion should become a natural way of acting for them, and not an extraordinary and occasional fact".

See Le pape François et la valorisation des laïcs