BISHOP MARIAN ELEGANTI AND THE SYNODAL DETOUR: A CALL BACK TO CHRIST
A bishop who has not forgotten his vows
In an era when episcopal statements too often resemble press releases rather than prophetic witness, Bishop Marian Eleganti stands apart. His words are not measured for political effect but issued from conviction—monastic, doctrinal, and paternal. Born in 1952 and ordained a Benedictine monk of Disentis Abbey, he absorbed the spirit of St Benedict’s command: ausculta, fili—“listen, my son.” His listening, however, has not been to the noise of committees but to the silence of prayer. Having served as Abbot of St Otmarsberg before becoming Auxiliary Bishop of Chur, he experienced at close quarters both the spiritual power of tradition and the bureaucratic drift that has seized much of the post-conciliar Church. When he resigned in 2021, it was not out of fatigue but fidelity. He wished to speak freely, and he has.¹
For the sake of Christ’s love—stop the overkill
Eleganti’s July 2025 essay “Synodalität als Code-Wort” resounded like the tolling of a warning bell. He pleaded with his brethren to cease what he called the “overkill of synodal documents, intermediate steps, and proliferating commissions,” concluding in “an assembly in canonical no-man’s-land.” He accused the hierarchy of “spinning around in circles in a process that has not awakened love for Jesus Christ in a single soul.” To him, the Synod on Synodality had become a bureaucratic ouroboros—an institution feeding upon itself, endlessly producing texts that few read and fewer believe.²
He wrote with weary candour: “The vast majority of the people of God ignore your documents.” The shepherds, he observed, are conversing with themselves while the flock wanders away. Instead of winning souls, the Church now measures stakeholder satisfaction. Eleganti denounced this self-referential cycle as the very antithesis of the Gospel. “Proclaim the Gospel,” he cries, “for the sake of Christ’s love! Talk about Jesus Christ instead of synodality!” For him, the problem is not communication but conversion. The Church cannot hope to transform the world if she is ceaselessly conforming to it.
A Church distracted from her mission
The Swiss bishop’s critique pierces to the heart of the malaise. While synodal commissions multiply, the pews empty; while “dialogue” fills press conferences, catechesis disappears; while bishops issue statements on climate and governance, they neglect the first works of faith. Eleganti identifies this inversion as a spiritual sickness—an exhaustion masked by productivity. He writes that since the Second Vatican Council the Church has lived in a state of constant self-examination but little repentance. The fruit of this introspection is paralysis: “You live in a bubble and employ the wrong people,” he warns. The Church, like an over-managed corporation, is perishing of its paperwork.
Process without Pentecost
At the centre of his accusation lies a theological insight. Discernment of spirits, Eleganti reminds his readers, is not a democratic exercise. It presupposes orthodoxy, humility, and grace. To pretend that 1.4 billion Catholics, many scarcely catechised, can together “listen to the Spirit” without error or manipulation is, he argues, delusion. The invocation of the Holy Ghost has become too glib, a convenient absolution for predetermined policies. “What is new,” he writes, “is the illusion that this work of discernment can be carried out without being politicised, instrumentalised, or derailed.”³
Eleganti cites Fiducia supplicans and Traditionis custodes as examples of such manipulation—documents issued with fanfare in the name of unity that instead sow discord and distrust. These texts, he argues, were not fruits of genuine listening but products of ideological management. The supposed “new synodality,” he concludes, has produced a Church “more authoritarian and manipulative than any in recent memory—an endless search for desired results.” The result is volatility of doctrine, shifting sands where once stood the rock of Peter.³
Christ before committee
For Eleganti, the remedy is not reform of the process but repentance of the heart. “Proclaim Christ,” he exhorts, “not procedure, not accompaniment.” The Church’s first duty is to convert sinners, teach the faith, and sanctify the world. Synodality, he warns, risks becoming an idol—a perpetual motion machine absorbing all energy while the Gospel fades from view. Meanwhile the real crises go unaddressed: the loss of belief in Christ’s divinity and resurrection, the collapse of priestly vocations, the spread of heterodox moral teaching, the degradation of worship, and the demographic decline of Christian nations.
He notes, too, that the Church’s most faithful children—young families, converts, and those drawn to the traditional liturgy—are systematically ignored. They are told they are “rigid” even as they crowd small chapels and study the Catechism with fervour. In France and England, he observes, adult baptisms are rising; in Albania, Christians now outnumber Muslims; yet synodal assemblies spend more time on sociological experiments than on evangelisation.²
Liturgy as remedy, not relic
Eleganti’s defence of the usus antiquior springs not from nostalgia but from theology. The ancient liturgy, he says, directs the soul God-ward; it is a school of silence, adoration, and mystery. The reformed rites, when performed with improvisation and verbosity, risk becoming self-referential. The young, he insists, intuitively sense this difference. They do not crave novelty but transcendence. To restrict the traditional Mass, therefore, is to stifle the very renewal the Church claims to seek.³ His appeal recalls the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi: to restore the faith, restore the liturgy.
A reception divided
The responses to his critique mirror the fissures of the modern Church. Traditionalists hail him as a prophet; centrists acknowledge his sincerity but wince at his tone; progressives dismiss him as reactionary. Yet even among his detractors, there is reluctant respect. His candour cannot be mistaken for malice. Katholisch.de and the National Catholic Register have both noted his criticism of the Vatican’s steering of the synodal process and of documents like “The Bishop of Rome,” which he warns could relativise the Petrine office.⁴
What unites his supporters is the conviction that Eleganti has voiced aloud what many bishops and priests whisper privately: that synodality has become an ecclesial substitute for faith, a perpetual conversation designed to postpone confession. Those who reject his message often prove it, insisting that such frankness is “divisive”—as if truth were the enemy of unity.
What his challenge demands
The bishop’s rebuke is ultimately pastoral. He does not call for withdrawal but for purification. The Church must remember her purpose: salvation, not self-maintenance. Truth must precede tally; worship must precede workshops; mission must precede minutes; and authority must precede activism. Eleganti’s demand for “fewer documents and more preaching of Christ crucified and risen” is not a slogan but a survival plan. To continue down the path of proceduralism is to mistake movement for life.
He ends with a line that could serve as a maxim for every bishop and priest in the Church: “More missionaries, fewer spin-doctors.” In these seven words lies a programme of restoration. The world does not need ecclesial consultants; it needs saints.
A necessary witness
Bishop Eleganti’s outcry may scandalise those who equate unity with unanimity, yet it may also prove salvific. When bureaucracies stagnate, God raises prophets from within them. Like St Bruno, whose silence founded the Carthusians, or St Catherine of Siena, who reproved popes to their faces, Eleganti reminds his brethren that love sometimes must shout. The Church cannot be renewed by endless process but only by renewed holiness.
In his own words: “Stop keeping the Church in a never-ending synodal frenzy, supposedly to exchange gifts. Do something to renew the liturgy and catechesis in these anti-Christian times.” To that we may add the prayer of every faithful Catholic weary of committees and communiqués: Lord, send us shepherds who will preach Thee, not policies.
¹ National Catholic Register, Solène Tadié, “Swiss Bishop: I No Longer Expect Anything Good From the Upcoming Synod,” 10 Nov 2022.
² Marian Eleganti, “Synodalität als Code-Wort,” 11 July 2025; excerpts in The Remnant, 16 July 2025.
³ “Auxiliary Bishop Eleganti: Fixed Agendas Determine World Synod,” Katholisch.de (English edition), 15 Aug 2024.
⁴ FSSPX.News, “Archbishop Eleganti No Longer Trusts the Synod,” 7 Nov 2022; “Bishop Eleganti Criticizes the Latest Ecumenical Document,” 21 Jun 2024.
Leave a Reply