Pope Francis has put Vatican insiders on notice in a speech to bishops, envisioning a church that draws its power from the people instead of a stodgy, disconnected hierarchy — a move to shift the church’s center of gravity that experts say brings it back to its roots.

“The centralization of all authority in Rome is in fact a modern idea, and basically Pope Francis wants to move us back to a pattern that was more typical of the early church,” said Thomas H. Groome, a professor and director of Boston College’s Church of the 21st Century Center.

Pope Francis told bishops yesterday at a Vatican synod on family issues that “walking together” as a church of lay people, bishops and a pope “is an easy concept to put into words, but not so easy to put into practice.”

But having a church that gives everyone a say would be a great example to the world that “often hands over the destiny of entire populations into the greedy hands of restricted groups of the powerful,” Francis said.

Papal historian the Rev. Thomas Worcester of the College of the Holy Cross said listening to input from more people could be seen as “rather messy, but Pope Francis would say that’s what the Church is called to do.”

Francis reminded the bishops that he kicked off preparations for this meeting two years ago by calling on Catholics everywhere to take surveys about their thoughts on family life.

“The flock has an ‘instinct’ to discern new ways that the Lord is revealing to the Church,” Pope Francis said yesterday. “How would we ever be able to speak about the family without engaging families, listening to their joys and hopes, their sorrows and their anguish?”

He also said it wouldn’t be appropriate for the pope to replace bishops when addressing local problems. “In this sense, I feel the need to proceed in a healthy ‘decentralization,’ ” he said.

Peter Borre, chairman of the Boston-based Council of Parishes, said, “Let’s not forget this pope never worked in Rome for a single day until he became pope. His whole career was spent out in the field in Argentina.”

One of the pope’s first moves in 2013 was appointing a study group to revamp the mess of Vatican offices and agencies, and late last year he slammed the “spiritual ailments” present in the Vatican bureaucracy that lead some to seek power and wealth instead of making the church a holier place.

Borre warned that even though moving power from the Vatican to local groups of bishops sounds good, the plan has risks for dioceses.

“They are not democracies,” he said. “They are run by one guy, and if you are giving more power to these heads of dioceses some will probably open up to the civilians, but American bishops by and large are the command-and-control type.”