Eighty-eight "public-facing Catholics", including five cardinals, came together in New York late last week for a three-day conference hosted by Fordham University.

The ‘ecclesial gathering’, which was dedicated to Pope Francis’ 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, was the fourth in a series of annual conferences aimed at exploring the Pope’s thought and ministry.

The series of gatherings, entitled ‘The Way Forward’, is jointly organized by Fordham University, Loyola University Chicago, Boston College, and Sacred Heart University.

Loyola’s Michael P. Murphy, one of the conference’s organizers, spoke to Vatican News about this year’s event.

Spreading Pope’s vision in US

The goal of the conference, Murphy said, was to “host conversations that are helpful to the US Church”, rooted in “the vision of Vatican II in the way that Pope Francis imagines”.

With that in mind, the conference brought together eighty-eight Catholic bishops, theologians, journalists, philanthropists and “public-facing Catholics”, including five cardinals, for a series of talks spread over three days, from the 12th to the 14th March.

The conference, Murphy suggested, was particularly resonant in today’s “charged” geopolitical environment.

Current events, he said, have demonstrated that “Pope Francis is the most credible and wise leader we have in the world right now”. They have also demonstrated anew, Murphy said, that the Catholic tradition “has a lot to offer in the public square”: “creative” and “socially helpful” ideas that “meet people where they are”.

After “some pretty rocky years” dominated by the sexual abuse scandal, Murphy said, it had been “energizing” for conference attendees to be reminded of “how much the Catholic tradition has to offer today”.  

Reality over ideas

Many of the talks at the conference, which were delivered by Catholic theologians, were devoted to academic topics, from “Fratelli Tutti in an Ecclesial Context” to “Forming Consciences and Prudential Judgements”.

 However, Murphy stressed, the aim was not to remain “in the clouds”.

“Pope Francis is always saying ‘Reality is greater than ideas’”, Murphy noted. At the conference, he said, “we’re not saying ideas don't matter, but we're trying to see where ideas and lived experience meet.”

This means that a major focus of the conference is on concrete results – and the organizers also meet up in between the conferences, which are annual, to discuss implementation.

Last year’s conference, on Laudato si, Murphy said, led to the formation of the Common Home Corps, an environmental formation program for young adults in the US, and plans to fund sustainability officials in Catholic organizations across the country.

Another major goal of the conference, Murphy said, was to “be of service to the bishops”.

Today, he stressed, bishops are often so busy “putting out fires” that they don’t have much time for study and reflection – and many of them appreciated the conference for exactly that reason, seeing it as “a kind of ongoing formation.”