There are uncomfortable truths that, when put in black and white from the Vatican offices, shake the very foundations of the institution. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has published Venite ad me ( “Come to me” ), a document whose initial diagnosis is as realistic as it is devastating for contemporary Catholicism: in large regions of the world, the transmission of the faith from parents to children has simply broken down.

Far from seeking refuge in nostalgia or easy lamenting modern times, the text—conceived not as a rigid doctrinal manual, but as an open call to reflection—addresses without filters the vertigo of this “epochal shift.” Screens, digital hyperconnectivity, cultural fragmentation, and the profound existential weariness that plagues new generations have completely transformed the playing field. What once worked through social or familial inertia no longer resonates.

From abstract dogma to the human embrace

The core of the Vatican proposal is an urgent call to reclaim the kerygma , that is, the unadorned proclamation of God’s unconditional love, stripped of ecclesiastical bureaucracy and inaccessible theological discourses. The document recalls that Jesus never waited in a closed sanctuary nor founded exclusive schools; he walked the streets, knew the trades of his time, listened to people’s daily struggles, and unhesitatingly sided with the “least.”

This is the key theme that runs throughout the text: recovering an accessible language, capable of connecting with adults who long ago turned their backs on religion and with young people who have never heard of it in any meaningful way. Faith, the document warns, is not transmitted through moral imposition or cultural obligation, but through living witness, the beauty of art, liturgy, and, above all, a genuine closeness that alleviates the burden of a hyper-accelerated society.

Testimonies from the abyss

To illustrate this pastoral shift, the text includes a section unusual in Roman dicasteries: a series of first-person testimonies. These are accounts from men and women who had experienced the depths of addiction, despair, or utter indifference, and who rediscovered the Gospel not through a doctrinal treatise, but through human encounters with believers who embodied compassion and welcome.

With this step, the Church takes on the most complex challenge in its recent history: to stop taking for granted that the world knows its message and to start anew. In an era marked by digital noise and existential fatigue, the Vatican is proposing that the only way forward for the Christian message is to return to being, as the Gospel motto promised, a refuge for the weary and burdened.