Fridolin Ambongo Besungu

"It has always been important for the Capuchins to encourage lay people to take an active part in the Church and in effect we have many local lay Catholics in the Franciscan Tertiary Order. This is very encouraging for us because the collaboration of well-prepared lay people is necessary for the apostolate."

"Francis will go down in history as the Pope of reform. He has done a great deal to reform the Church, and this must continue, and I believe it will continue, for the simple reason that before leaving office he concluded the cycle of the Synod on synodality. And what has been produced by this Synod has become a heritage for the whole Church. Interviewer: You mentioned synodality. In mid-March, Francis approved the start of a synodal journey that should lead to an ecclesial assembly in 2028. Can we say that this synodal journey remains unfinished? Cardinal Ambongo: I wouldn't say unfinished. The Pope always repeated: "I pray to the Lord that he will grant me enough time so that the reforms that have begun can reach the point of no return." I believe that the reform initiatives undertaken by Francis have now reached that point. That is why I am convinced that the reforms will continue."

"The Pope himself considered his trip to Congo one of his most important apostolic visits."

"(About the Synod on Synodality) So, coming to this Synod, the intention was not to address this or that problem. The main intention, the primary objective of the Synod, is about how we can become a new Church together, acquire a new way of being the Church; in our way of being, in our operating structures, in our collaboration structures."

"We have the impression, at least from the outside, that the West is losing its roots, and the roots of the West are precisely the values that the West brought us during colonisation, and we believed in these values; but today we see that these values no longer exist for the West, and this confuses us a little. We ask ourselves: where is the West going with this kind of approach? And when I say that the West is in danger of disappearing, it is because a people is also its culture, but we have the impression that the West is no longer willing to embrace its culture: everything is relativised, everything is questioned, and this, in any case, disturbs us."