Gods of Heaven and Earth: The Anti-Idolatrous Criterion in Pope Francis’s Ecclesiology of the People of God

This article argues that Pope Francis’s ecclesiology is centrally shaped by the concept of the People of God, which was retrieved and renewed through a historical, communal, and charismatic perspective in the second chapter of Lumen Gentium. In Francis’s ecclesiological vision, this concept can be more adequately interpreted through the anti-idolatrous criterion, rooted in biblical prophecy and subsequently retrieved by Latin American liberation theology. Through a historical-genetic and critical analysis of Francis’s magisterium, the article examines the relationship between the Church’s self-understanding, its institutional configuration, and its mission within history. The analysis begins with the tension between an ecclesiocentric understanding of the Church, which may turn ecclesial structures into ends in themselves, and an understanding of the Church oriented toward concrete human life and the transformation of reality. From this perspective, the article examines how the ad extra movement of Francis’s ecclesiology articulates the construction of the People of God with the defense of human dignity, fraternity, integral ecology, and a critique of every form of absolutization of created realities. It further argues that this anti-idolatrous logic extends to the ad intra movement expressed through synodality: the renewal of the Church does not constitute an end in itself but derives its meaning from the conversion of a self-referential community into a missionary Church open to humanity. The article concludes that the anti-idolatrous criterion enables Francis’s ecclesiology of the People of God to be understood as an ongoing process of institutional and communal conversion, through which the Church relativizes every claim to self-absolutization and reorients itself toward fraternity and toward a more humane way of inhabiting the world.