Pope Francis said in a video message to the Pontifical Commission for Latin America that synodality does not mean “a more or less democratic, much less a ‘populist’ way, of being a Church.”

Stating that the Church in Latin America is relatively proficient in synodality, the Pope recalled that early liberation theology “played a lot with Marxist analysis” and that “almost 80% of the notes [in early books by liberation theologians] were written in German.”

“They didn’t have the slightest idea,” the Pope commented. “It was an ideologization of what a Latin American earthy path is. And I say earthy because Latin American spirituality is attached to the earth and cannot be separated” from it.