Synod: A chance to let the Holy Spirit lead

Bishop Michael Martin calls on all people to embrace the Synod on Synodality, the Church’s worldwide effort to prayerfully listen to the Holy Spirit and to one another. Read it here.

Pope Francis celebrates the closing Mass for the Synod of Bishops on synodality in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Oct. 27, 2024. The newly restored 17th-century canopy is seen standing over the basilica's main altar. (CNS/Lola Gomez)

'We do not need a sedentary and defeatist church, but a church that hears the cry of the world and ... a church that gets its hands dirty to serve the Lord.' — Pope Francis

Pope warns against becoming a ‘sedentary’ church after synod’s close

VATICAN CITY — Three years after he asked the world's Catholics to walk together in faith on a synodal journey, Pope Francis said that the church cannot risk becoming "static" but must continue as a "missionary church that walks with her Lord through the streets of the world."

"We cannot remain inert before the questions raised by the women and men of today, before the challenges of our time, the urgency of evangelization and the many wounds that afflict humanity," the pope said in his homily during the closing Mass for the Synod of Bishops in St. Peter's Basilica Oct. 27.

"A sedentary church, that inadvertently withdraws from life and confines itself to the margins of reality, is a church that risks remaining blind and becoming comfortable with its own unease," he said.

Pope Francis delivered his homily seated in front of the basilica's newly restored 17th-century baldachin -- the gilded bronze canopy that had been shrouded in scaffolding for restoration work since February.

Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, was the main celebrant at the altar under the baldachin.

The previous day, the pope received the final document approved by the more than 350 members of the synod. The document called for the increased participation of lay men and women in all levels of church life, including in parishes, dioceses and in seminaries.

Pope Francis told the synod assembly Oct. 26 that he did not plan to publish an apostolic exhortation after the synod due to the "already highly concrete indications" in the final synod document, which he ordered published.

In his homily, the pope called on the church not to remain in a state of "blindness" to the issues in the church and the world, a blindness that can take the form of embracing worldliness, placing a premium on comfort or having a closed heart.

The church must listen to men and women "who wish to discover the joy of the Gospel," he said, but it also must listen to "those who have turned away" from faith and to "the silent cry of those who are indifferent," as well as the poor, marginalized and desperate.

"We do not need a sedentary and defeatist church," he said, "but a church that hears the cry of the world and -- I want to say it, maybe someone will be scandalized -- a church that gets its hands dirty to serve the Lord."

Reflecting on the day's Gospel reading from St. Mark in which a blind man hears Jesus pass by, asks for healing, regains his sight and then follows him, the pope stressed that following God on the synodal path entails cultivating the capacity to hear the Lord pass by and the confidence to follow in his footsteps.

"We follow the Lord along the way, we do not follow him closed in our communities, we do not follow him in the labyrinths of our ideas," he said. "Let us remember never to walk alone or according to worldly criteria, but instead to journey together, behind him and alongside him."

At the end of Mass, four Vatican workers carried the Chair of St. Peter into the basilica and placed it before the main altar. The chair -- temporarily removed for restoration from its encasement in a sculpture behind the basilica's back altar -- is traditionally believed to have belonged to St. Peter, the first pope.

In his wheelchair, the pope sat in front of the chair in prayer at the end of Mass.

In his homily he had said, "This is the chair of love, unity and mercy, according to Jesus' command to the Apostle Peter not to lord it over others, but to serve them in charity."

After Mass, the pope prayed the Angelus with visitors in St. Peter's Square. Speaking about the end of the Synod of Bishops, the pope asked people to "pray so that all that we have done in this month may continue forward for the good of the church."
— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Synod: A chance to let the Holy Spirit lead

Bishop Michael Martin calls on all people to embrace the Synod on Synodality, the Church’s worldwide effort to prayerfully listen to the Holy Spirit and to one another. Read it here.

'We do not need a sedentary and defeatist church, but a church that hears the cry of the world and ... a church that gets its hands dirty to serve the Lord.' — Pope Francis

Pope warns against becoming a ‘sedentary’ church after synod’s close

Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, was the main celebrant at the altar under the baldachin.

In his wheelchair, the pope sat in front of the chair in prayer at the end of Mass.

In his homily he had said, "This is the chair of love, unity and mercy, according to Jesus' command to the Apostle Peter not to lord it over others, but to serve them in charity."

Synod calls for quick steps to involve more people in church life

Synod calls for quick steps to involve more people in church life

VATICAN CITY — Parishes and dioceses must move quickly to give life to the consultative bodies and broad participation in mission and ministry already foreseen by church law if the Catholic Church is to have any hope of becoming a more "synodal" church, members of the Synod of Bishops said.

"Without concrete changes in the short term, the vision of a synodal Church will not be credible and this will alienate those members of the People of God who have drawn strength and hope from the synodal journey," the members said in the final document they approved Oct. 26.

Pope Francis convoked the synod in 2021 and called on parishes, dioceses and bishops' conferences to hold listening sessions before the first synod assembly in Rome in 2023. The current assembly, including most of the same members, began with a Mass at the Vatican Oct. 2.

Members voted on each of the 155 paragraphs of the document, which made suggestions and requests to Pope Francis that included long-term projects, such as continuing discernment about the possibility of women deacons, the need to reform seminary training and the hope that more lay people would be involved in the selection of bishops.

But they also included actions that could and should be implemented immediately, including hiring more women and laymen to teach in seminaries or having bishops make pastoral councils mandatory for every parish and pastors ensuring those bodies are truly representative of the parish members and that he listens to their advice.

Synod officials said all the paragraphs were approved by the necessary two-thirds of synod members present and voting; 355 members were present and voting, so passage required 237 votes. A paragraph devoted to increasing women's profile in the church received, by far, the most negative votes of any paragraph with 97 members voting no and 258 voting yes. The paragraph, which required 66% of the votes, passed with 72%.

"In simple and concise terms," members said, "synodality is a path of spiritual renewal and structural reform that enables the Church to be more participatory and missionary, so that it can walk with every man and woman, radiating the light of Christ."

In a synodal church, the document said, members have different roles, but they work together for the good of all members and for the mission of the church.

Like the synthesis report from the first assembly of the synod in 2023, the final document did not use the term "LGBTQ" or even "homosexuality" and spoke only briefly about the need to reach out to people who "experience the pain of feeling excluded or judged because of their marital situation, identity or sexuality."

The document repeatedly referred to the "equal dignity" of men and women by virtue of their baptism and insisted the Catholic Church needed to do more to recognize women's contributions to the life and mission of the church and their potential to offer more.

"Women continue to encounter obstacles in obtaining a fuller recognition of their charisms, vocation and roles in all the various areas of the Church's life," it said. "This is to the detriment of serving the Church's shared mission."

Members of the synod called for the "full implementation of all the opportunities already provided for in Canon Law with regard to the role of women," and said, "there is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the Church. What comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped."

"Additionally, the question of women's access to diaconal ministry remains open," they said. "This discernment needs to continue."

The question of women deacons was among several questions Pope Francis assigned to study groups last spring. Synod members asked the General Secretariat of the Synod "to continue to watch over the synodal quality of the working method of the study groups," which are supposed to report to the pope in June.

The synod process, members said, was a "call to joy and renewal of the Church in following the Lord, in committing to service of His mission and in searching for ways to be faithful."

But the document repeatedly acknowledged the crime and sin of clerical sexual abuse and abuse of power, and insisted that a commitment to synodality, particularly to learning to listen and to necessary forms of transparency and accountability, were essential to preventing abuse.

Synodality, members said, "will also help to overcome clericalism, understood as use of power to one's own advantage and the distortion of the authority of the Church which is at the service of the People of God. This expresses itself above all in forms of abuse, be they sexual or economic, the abuse of conscience and of power, by ministers of the Church."

Lay men and women have many talents that can and should assist bishops and parish priests in the smooth functioning of their dioceses or parishes, synod members said. Tapping into those talents can help bishops and priests, who often feel overworked.

Where church law requires the bishops to consult their priests' or pastoral council or pastors to consult the parish council, the document said, they "may not act as if the consultation had not taken place."

"As in any community that lives according to justice," it said, "the exercise of authority does not consist in an arbitrary imposition of will."

Synod members also said listening, consulting, praying and discerning before making a decision is not the end of the process. "It must be accompanied and followed by practices of accountability and evaluation in a spirit of transparency inspired by evangelical criteria."

Ensuring accountability and regularly evaluating all those who minister in the church's name "is not a bureaucratic task for its own sake. It is rather a communication effort that proves to be a powerful educational tool for bringing about a change in culture," synod members said.

One issue that prompted debate during the synod involved the authority of national bishops' conference, particularly when it came to doctrinal matters.

The synod members, in the final document, called for a study of the theological and juridical status of bishops' conferences and for a clear definition of "precisely the domain of the doctrinal and disciplinary competence" of the conferences.
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Synod gave life to new way of being church, members say

Synod gave life to new way of being church, members say

Pope Francis and members of the Synod of Bishops on synodality pose for a photo after the synod's final working session Oct. 26, 2024, in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican. (CNS/Vatican Media)VATICAN CITY — Members of the Synod of Bishops experienced a new way of being church and are committing to sharing it, said the two cardinals who guided its work.

Speaking Oct. 26 after synod members passed their final document and Pope Francis approved it, Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the synod, told reporters, "For me, personally, this document is important, but there is a document that was not written, which is the experience" of synodality by all those who took part in the global process since its beginning in 2021.

"The experience during this year has been beautiful," he told reporters at the synod's final news conference Oct. 26. And now the final document will help support local churches as they "try to take on this style of synodality."

"We have walked together and now we know that we have to (keep walking) together in the future. And that's, I think, the great lesson we could experience," Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, relator general of the synod, said after the synod members wrapped up the second session of the synod on synodality.

"We not only have to teach the document, but we also have tried to give people the experience in order to become a real synodal church on mission. Let's not forget" that sharing the Gospel is the ultimate goal of the multiyear process, he said.

"We have not gathered just to look (at) structures of the church; we have not gathered to make a battle between conservatives and liberals. We have gathered to have a synodal church for all the baptized, a church which fulfills, which listens to the mission it has received from Christ and tries to do that in everyday life," Cardinal Hollerich said.

At the news conference, members of the synod's general secretariat were asked what has changed and became possible thanks to this year's session that would not have been possible at the first session in Rome in 2023.

"The fact that we have continued the practice of listening is already a huge benefit," Cardinal Grech said.

Cardinal Hollerich said, "Last year you could still say there was a majority group (and) a minority group, which eyed each other sometimes with suspicion."

But, by following the methodology of the synod, which includes prayer, mutual listening and "the conversation in the Holy Spirit, something new is growing, a new reality of being church together," which meant, this year, the experience "was completely different," he said.

"Of course, on certain subjects, opinions were divided, which is quite normal in such an assembly" with people coming from so many different backgrounds and cultures, he said.

"But it was not seen as a kind of political meeting where you have to try to get the majority," Cardinal Hollerich said.

The second session ended Oct. 26 with everybody "full of joy," he said, and there was no visible sense of people lamenting that their position had not been taken into consideration.

Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa, a special secretary for the synodal assembly, said the final document's focus on how to be a more welcoming and participatory church also has clear and important consequences for local churches in communities where large numbers of migrants and newcomers live.

It's not just about having new approaches and techniques, he said, but an entirely new way of seeing the church as "pilgrims rooted in movement," he said.

"This is also the perspective in which the church wants to live, respond and also witness something in a globalized world," the priest said.

"We can no longer think (of the church) in the traditional way with the closed walls of one's own parish, own bell tower and own priest and that ends there," he said. 'We are called to be rooted but in the sense of pilgrimage, of walking together toward a goal, all of us toward the Kingdom."

The church must be an open "hub" and "meeting point" for everyone in the wider community: those who have been there for a long time; those who are passing through as workers or students; and all those in many other different situations, Father Costa said.

"It can no longer close itself off in its own reality," he said, but what people will always find at the center of every parish is the Eucharist, "which expresses this union that goes beyond all borders and in Christ makes us discover each other as brothers and sisters," he said.
— Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

Publishing synod document, pope says he will not write exhortation

Publishing synod document, pope says he will not write exhortation

Pope Francis speaks to members of the Synod of Bishops on synodality after they approved their final document Oct. 26, 2024, in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican. (CNS/Vatican Media)VATICAN CITY — After members of the Synod of Bishops approved their final document, Pope Francis announced that he would not write the customary post-synodal apostolic exhortation but would offer the final document to the entire church to implement.

"There are already highly concrete indications in the document that can be a guide for the mission of the churches in the different continents and contexts," he told synod members late Oct. 26.

"For that reason, I do not intend to publish an apostolic exhortation. What we have approved is enough," he said. Instead, he ordered the publication of the synod's final document.

With the exceptions of the first synods convoked by St. Paul VI in 1967 and 1971, all ordinary assemblies of the Synod of Bishops have been followed by an exhortation on the synod's themes and discussions by the pope.

Members of the synod on synodality, after meeting for a month in 2023 and again from Oct. 2-26, approved their final document by voting on each of the 155 paragraphs. All paragraphs passed with the approval of more than two-thirds of the members present and voting.

The document presented synodality as a style of Christian life and ministry based on the "equal dignity of all the baptized" and a recognition that they all have something to offer to the mission of proclaiming salvation in Christ.

The practical suggestions included making pastoral councils mandatory for every parish and ensuring the bodies are truly representative of the parish members, recognizing the contributions of women to the life and ministry of the church and hiring more women and laymen to teach in seminaries.

The 10 study groups the pope set up in the spring to research some of the more complicated issues raised by the synod -- women's ministry, seminary education, relations between bishops and religious communities, the role of nuncios -- will continue to work before offering him proposals, the pope said. "Time is needed, to arrive at choices that involve the whole church."

However, he promised that "this is not the classical way of postponing decisions indefinitely."

Instead, he told synod members, it "corresponds to the synodal style with which even the Petrine ministry is to be exercised: listening, convening, discerning, deciding and evaluating. And in these steps, pauses, silences, prayer are necessary. It is a style that we are learning together, little by little."

Much of the 2021-2023 process for the synod on synodality, the pope said, involved listening sessions on a parish, diocesan, national and continental level and included helping synod members themselves learn to listen to each other respectfully and listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit in those conversations.

The final document "is a triple gift," he said, one given to him first of all. "The bishop of Rome, I often remind myself, needs to practice listening and wants to practice listening so as to respond each day to the words of the Lord, 'Confirm your brothers and sisters in the faith. Feed my sheep.'"

The task of the pope, he said, "is to safeguard and promote -- as St. Basil teaches us -- the harmony that the Spirit continues to spread in God's church, in relations among the churches, despite all the struggles, tensions and divisions that mark its journey toward the full manifestation of the Kingdom of God, which the vision of the Prophet Isaiah invites us to imagine as a banquet prepared by God for all peoples -- all, with the hope that no one is missing."

Pope Francis repeated the phrase that has become a refrain since he first said it at World Youth Day in Portugal in 2023: "Everyone, everyone, everyone! No one excluded, everyone."

Harmony is the goal, he said, not uniformity. It is a sign of the Holy Spirit, just as it was on Pentecost when people of different nations heard the disciples proclaiming the wondrous works of God in their own languages.

The church, the pope said, "a sign and instrument of how God has already set the table and is waiting. His grace, through the Spirit, whispers words of love into the heart of each person. It is given to us to amplify the voice of this whisper, without hindering it; to open doors, without erecting walls."

"How bad it is when women and men of the church erect walls," he said. The Gospel is for "everyone, everyone, everyone! We must not behave as if we were dispensers of grace who appropriate the treasure and tie the hands of the merciful God."
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Synod is lesson in moving at 'pace of the Holy Spirit,' archbishop says

Synod is lesson in moving at 'pace of the Holy Spirit,' archbishop says

VATICAN CITY — Change in the Catholic Church, including a commitment to recognizing women's leadership gifts and being more welcoming of all people, happens slowly and deliberately, which is a good thing in a rapidly changing world, said the archbishop of Seattle.

Archbishop Paul D. Etienne of Seattle, a papally-appointed member of the Synod of Bishops, said that as the second synod assembly nears its conclusion Oct. 27, people might not see what they hoped for in the synod's final document, but the gathering heard them and took their input seriously.

"The topic of the synod is synodality. That's the first step," the archbishop told Catholic News Service Oct. 24. "The very simple fact that people have been able to express their hurts, their frustrations (and) their desires to the highest level of the church, the broadest level of the church, that's the first step."

"And it is no secret that the church moves slowly when it comes to decision taking," he said.

After last year's synod assembly, Pope Francis established study groups to explore some of the more complicated and controversial issues raised at the synod, including women's ministry, inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics, seminary training, and the appointment and ministry of bishops.

Having specialized study groups focus on each subject "is not going to bring about rapid change," at least not as rapid as one sees in society, the archbishop said, "but that's a part of the beauty of the church."

"The synod operates within the guardrails of tradition and sacred Scripture," he said, and that ensures that decisions reflect the Catholic faith and not simply a given culture.

The prayer, discussion and discernment built into the synod's structure also acknowledge that "the church in different cultures and different parts of the world and on different topics moves at different paces," Archbishop Etienne said. "And I've experienced that in the conversations I've had with people from around the world this month."

Catholics in the Seattle Archdiocese would like to see "the voices of women being heard," and some "even want to see women being ordained deacons," he said, and they "certainly want a greater receptivity of the LGBTQ community."

Many people probably will be disappointed that concrete action is not being taken on those issues immediately, the archbishop said, but he hopes they also will understand that one goal of synodality is to help the church learn to move at "the pace of the Holy Spirit."

The key question, he said, is "how do we become a church that is living its faith in all of the different cultures and contexts of the world and doing it in a manner that invites all of the baptized into a deeper life in the risen Christ and into a deeper participation in his mission, which is the mission of the church?"

Synodality asks all baptized Catholics to live their faith deeply and actively in the world, breaking down barriers, recognizing their neighbors, "rebuilding torn relationships, bridging divisions and healing the wounds of humanity," he said. "So, it's very practical."

Archbishop Etienne said he hopes synodality will be a clear feature of "Partners in the Gospel," an ongoing process in the Archdiocese of Seattle that superficially could be described as reducing the number of parishes by half. But it was a process that involved reflection and consultation with parishioners and calls for further consultation as the process continues.

In July, "the 136 parishes in the Archdiocese of Seattle became 60 parish families, with eight stand-alone parishes," the archdiocesan website explained.

"Is there anxiety? Is there fear? Is there frustration, even anger? All those emotions are a part of it," the archbishop said. "But I think deep down, people feel they are now being given the opportunity to shape their future."

Each "parish family" is being asked to spend the next three years looking at their available resources and developing a plan to advance their hopes for the life, activities and outreach of their parishes.

Archbishop Etienne said he wants to ensure "the co-responsibility of all the baptized" is being taken seriously, including by mandating the formation of new pastoral councils that are truly representative of the parishioners.

"It's not just the pastor having an idea in his head about what needs to take place, coming in and saying, 'Well, here's what we need to do,'" the archbishop said, "but rather bringing people together and saying, 'OK, here are the challenges that we're facing. Here is the mission that we all share. How are we going to do this?'"
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Church must empower women, Cardinal Fernández tells synod members

Church must empower women, Cardinal Fernández tells synod members

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, speaks with Xavière Missionary Sister Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, before the start of a morning session of the synod in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican Oct. 21, 2024. (CNS/Lola Gomez)VATICAN CITY — The Catholic Church must take concrete steps -- and soon -- to recognize and empower women's leadership and ministry in the church, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, told members of the Synod of Bishops.

"I am convinced that we cannot wait to take steps forward for the empowerment of women in the church," but part of that requires distinguishing between roles that require ordination and those that do not, the cardinal told about 100 synod members and participants Oct. 24.

The cardinal scheduled the meeting after missing a gathering Oct. 18 intended to inform members of the Synod of Bishops about the study group his office is coordinating on women's ministry and roles within the church.

At the second meeting, participants again let the cardinal know they were angry that he was not present the previous week, and they questioned how the study group related to "synodality" given that, so far, the cardinals, bishops and theologians involved were only dicastery members and consultants, which include very few women and very few people from outside Italy. Cardinal Fernández repeated what he told synod members Oct. 9: the study group would seek input from other women as well.

"On this topic," he responded, the input from women theologians is "the most important," but he also said that Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, for example, has submitted a report on the relationship in canon law between ordination and "potesta" or power. "This is a very important theme for developing the question of laity," he said, as it addresses "who can have an authority (or) a mission of leading communities."

Although the meeting Oct. 24 was private, the Vatican published an audio recording of the 90-meeting conversation the following day.

After the first assembly of the synod on synodality in 2023, Pope Francis set up 10 study groups to reflect more deeply on some of the most controversial or complicated questions raised during the synod process. Opening the diaconate to women and ensuring they have decision-making roles in the church was one of those questions.

But Cardinal Fernández told the synod Oct. 2 that Pope Francis does not consider the question of women deacons "mature," and so his study group is focused more on ways to expand the recognition of women's leadership and ministry in the church in ways that do not require ordination.

At the meeting Oct. 24, the cardinal clarified that while the pope believes the time is not ripe for women deacons, "he does not want to close the question; he says you can continue to study it patiently without obsession, without rushing, you can continue to study. And this is important."

For that reason, the cardinal said, the second commission Pope Francis set up in 2020 to study women deacons will be "revived" and already has set a date to meet.

The conclusions of that commission and an earlier one, established in 2016, "were that things absolutely are not clear," the cardinal said. "I haven't studied the reports, but I've glanced at them a bit."

Some historians say the women described as deacons in the New Testament and in early church writings were ordained while others say they simply were blessed, he said.

"So, I ask: If one discovers that in past centuries there were women who preached at Mass and they were not ordained, is that worth less?" Cardinal Fernández asked synod members. Or if there was evidence that women exercised authority in guiding communities, but were not ordained, he asked whether that would take away from their stature.

"Here, it is understandable when the pope says do not clericalize" the laity, the cardinal said. "That is why we think the primary path is to look at the place of women in the church," while continuing to look at "a secondary path, which is also important but not primary, and that is the question of the diaconate."

At the same time, he said, there is an ongoing theological discussion with one group saying, "ordination is not ordered exclusively to the priesthood but to ministry, and that opens the path to women's diaconate. The other argument insists on the unity of sacred orders -- diaconate, priesthood, episcopacy -- and there, it would be more difficult" to argue that women could be ordained.

Insisting he was speaking as a theologian and not as doctrinal dicastery prefect, Cardinal Fernandez said, "I think the grounds for saying no to the female diaconate are reasonable, but they are not sufficient. And the reasons for saying yes are still not enough to respond to the negative opinions."

"The conservatives will say, 'He's a fool who has not understood that it is impossible to ordain deaconesses, that it is contrary to the dogma and the tradition' etcetera," the cardinal said, "and progressives will say that I do not understand that there is nothing logical or reasonable in refusing ordination (to women) and that it is just a medieval fixation etcetera."

However, he said, "I am convinced that we cannot wait to take steps forward for the empowerment of women in the church" by distinguishing what requires ordination and what does not. "That is the idea of this study group."
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Cardinal calls for communion, continued action as synod nears end

Cardinal calls for communion, continued action as synod nears end

Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the synod, celebrates Mass with synod partici-pants at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Oct. 21, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)VATICAN CITY — As members of the Synod of Bishops entered the last week of their meeting in Rome, the synod's secretary-general urged them to resist the temptation of "covetousness" -- the desire "to keep everything for ourselves, to possess, to hoard, to define, to close."

"We must overcome the temptation to believe that the fruits we have harvested are our work and our possession: we must receive everything as a gift from God," Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the Secretariat of the Synod, said in his homily during a votive Mass for the Holy Spirit.

The Mass in St. Peter's Basilica Oct. 21 marked the beginning of the synod's last week of work at the Vatican, a week that was to be dedicated to discussing and amending a final document before putting it to a vote Oct. 26.

Reflecting on the Gospel reading from St. Luke, in which Jesus tells the parable of a man who decides to build larger storehouses after a bountiful harvest, the cardinal drew a parallel to the synod’s work. "We too, faced with the abundant fruits of the synodal journey, might ask ourselves the same question: What to do now?" he said.

Cardinal Grech said that the synodal process has allowed the church to "see the gifts that are flourishing in the people of God today, without hiding our frailties and wounds."

But "we too could run the risk of doing as this man did, of hoarding what we have collected, the gifts of God that we have discovered, without reinvesting them, without living them as gifts received that we must now give back to the church and the world," he said. "We too can run the risk of living off our earnings. But the understanding of truths and pastoral choices goes on, consolidates with the years, develops with time, deepens with age."

The cardinal told delegates, "If we listen to the voice of the Spirit, the conclusion of this synodal assembly will not be the end of something, but a new beginning, so that the Word of God may spread and be glorified."

Dressed in red vestments symbolizing both martyrdom and the Holy Spirit, Cardinal Grech also highlighted another scene from the Gospel reading in which Jesus is asked how to divide an inheritance among brothers. Jesus "refuses to divide, but invites us to seek communion, since he identifies greed and the pursuit of possession as the root of division," the cardinal said.

"Jesus rejects all logic of partisanship and division in the search for communion among brothers and sisters," he said, urging synod delegates to "prepare ourselves in these days to reap the fruits of our synodal journey and of our assembly without dividing ourselves, but seeking communion."

In the first three weeks of the assembly, synod delegates explored themes of synodality articulated in the session's working document: the foundations of a synodal church, relationships within the church, pathways for decision-making and the places where people experience the church in their daily lives.
— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Synod members elect council to oversee implementation, plan next synod

Synod members elect council to oversee implementation, plan next synod

VATICAN CITY — Members of the Synod of Bishops elected Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, and Bishop Alain Faubert of Valleyfield, Quebec, to be the North American members of the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod.

The council members, who must be bishops, oversee the implementation of a synod after its conclusion and prepare for the next meeting of the Synod of Bishops.

Members of the synod on synodality elected 12 members of the council during their meeting at the Vatican Oct. 23: one from the Eastern Catholic churches, one from Oceania, and two each from North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Pope Francis will select four members of the council at a future date, and he has decided that the prefect of the Vatican dicastery most closely tied to the theme of the next synod also will be a member of the ordinary council. The pope has not announced the theme yet.

Members of the ordinary council automatically become members of the next synod.

Besides Bishops Flores and Faubert, the council members elected Oct. 23 were:

Melkite Patriarch Joseph Absi.
Archbishop Timothy Costelloe of Perth, Australia.
Cardinal Luis Rueda Aparicio of Bogotá, Colombia.
Archbishop José Luis Azuaje Ayala of Maracaibo, Venezuela.
Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille, France.
Archbishop Gintaras Grušas of Vilnius, Lithuania.
Cardinal Dieudonné Nzapalainga of Bangui, Central African Republic.
Archbishop Andrew Fuanya Nkea of Bamenda, Cameroon
Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão of Goa and Damão, India.
Cardinal-designate Pablo David of Kalookan, Philippines.

— Catholic News Service

Synod deliberates on doctrinal authority of bishops' conferences

Synod deliberates on doctrinal authority of bishops' conferences

VATICAN CITY — Recognizing the doctrinal authority of bishops' conferences does not mean allowing them to reject the teaching authority of the pope, but rather to apply church teaching to their unique context, said the head of the Vatican Dicastery for Bishops.

"Each episcopal conference needs to have a certain authority in terms of saying, 'How are we going to understand this (doctrine) in the concrete reality in which we are living?'" Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, said during an Oct. 23 briefing on the Synod of Bishops.

The authority of national bishops' conferences has been a central topic in synod discussions on the decentralization of decision-making in the church.

The working document for the synod stated that bishops' conferences had not yet realized the full capacities envisioned for them by the Second Vatican Council, including "genuine doctrinal authority."

Cardinal Prevost said synod members noticed that the Spanish and Italian translations of the working document mention developing "some kind of doctrinal authority" for bishops' conferences rather than a more absolute form of doctrinal authority as could be insinuated from the English version, creating confusion among English-speaking synod discussion groups.

The cardinal said decentralization and allowing local churches to have a greater role in decision-making, recurring themes of the synod, would not negate church teaching on the primacy of the pope.

"The whole understanding of synodality is not that all of a sudden there is going to be a fully democratic, assembly-style way of exercising authority in the church," he said. "The primacy of Peter and of the successors of Peter, the bishop of Rome, of the pope, is something which enables the church to continue to live communion in a very concrete way."

"Synodality can have a great impact on how we are living in the church, but it certainly takes nothing away from what we would call the primacy" of the pope, said the cardinal.

Father Gilles Routhier, a theological expert at the synod from Canada, addressed concerns that giving bishops' conferences more doctrinal authority could lead to "disorder" due to their proposing potentially conflicting dogmas. He clarified that bishops' conferences cannot possess "an absolute authority to propose new dogmas" but must develop "an authority that understands limits" and remains in communion with the universal church.

"We can be afraid to entrust a doctrinal authority to episcopal conferences insofar as we fear a fragmentation of the church," he said. However, he added that the aim of the synod is to enable bishops' conferences to teach doctrine "so that this common faith does not simply remain at the abstract level, but responds to the questions of its people in its territories when they encounter contemporary challenges."

Following the synod, the church must better delineate the competencies of bishops' conferences to support "an authentic teaching of the bishops that can meet the concerns, questions and challenges" of the faithful, Father Routhier said.
— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

As synod nears end, preacher urges members to be at peace with results

As synod nears end, preacher urges members to be at peace with results

Cardinal-designate Timothy Radcliffe, theologian and former master of the Dominican or-der, who has been serving as a spiritual adviser to the Synod of Bishops on synodality, speaks at a press briefing about the synod at the Vatican Oct. 21, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)VATICAN CITY — Even if some members of the Synod of Bishops end up feeling disappointed by the results of the synod, "God's providence is at work in this assembly, bringing us to the Kingdom in ways that God alone knows," the spiritual adviser to the synod on synodality told them.

"The triumph of the good cannot be frustrated," and "we may be at peace whatever the result" of the synod's monthlong second session, said Cardinal-designate Timothy Radcliffe, offering his morning reflection in the Vatican's Paul VI Audience Hall Oct. 21 before members began reading, discussing, amending and voting on the final document to be presented to Pope Francis Oct. 26.

He also cautioned people, especially the media, against trying to look for "startling decisions, headlines" to come out of the final text, saying, at a Vatican briefing with reporters, that that would be a mistake.

The document will need to be read as something seeking to bring deep renewal of the church not "through dramatic decisions, but it evokes new ways of being a church in which we relate to each other much more profoundly in Christ and to Christ much more profoundly with each other," he said at the afternoon briefing.

"I think many people in the synod, out of the synod, in the church, still struggle to understand the nature of the synod. They still tend to see it as a parliamentary body which will make big administrative, structural changes. I think it's natural because that's the model that dominates our world," he told reporters. "But we've seen and it's been repeated endlessly that is not the sort of body it is."

The world is experiencing growing "violence and war, social disintegration. You've only to look at the election process in the United States to see how there is a danger of social collapse," he said. "In this perilous difficult moment, I think the church has a very particular vocation to be a sign of Christ's peace and Christ's communion and that means all sorts of steps which will not make headlines."

The Dominican theologian helped open the final week of the Oct. 2-27 assembly with a reflection in the morning on how members should embrace their freedom and responsibility.

"Christ has set us free," he said, and "our mission is to preach and embody this freedom."

This freedom, however, has two features: "It is the freedom to say what we believe and to listen without fear to what others say, in mutual respect," he said, and it is the freedom of knowing that God always works for the good of those who love God.

"God's providence is gently, silently at work even when things seem to go wrong," Cardinal-designate Radcliffe said.

"If we have only the freedom to argue for our positions, we shall be tempted by the arrogance of those who, in the words of (Jesuit Father Henri) de Lubac, see themselves as 'the incarnate norm of orthodoxy.' We shall end up beating the drums of ideology, whether of the left or the right," he said.

"If we have only the freedom of those who trust in God's providence but dare not wade into the debate with our own convictions, we shall be irresponsible and never grow up," he added. "God's freedom works in the core of our own freedom, welling up inside us."

"The more it is truly of God, the more it is truly our own," he said, pointing to some lessons offered by two theologians who had been silenced and shunned at one point by the Catholic Church's hierarchy -- popes and Vatican officials -- in Rome.

The late Dominican Father Yves Congar wrote "that the only response to this persecution was 'to speak the truth. Prudently, without provocative and useless scandal. But to remain -- and to become more and more -- an authentic and pure witness to what which is true,'" he said.

This shows, he said, "we need not be afraid of disagreement, for the Holy Spirit is at work even in that."

And the late Father de Lubac, who also "endured persecution," wrote that "far from losing patience," the one who is being persecuted "will try to keep the peace" and strive "to retain a mind bigger than its own ideas," the cardinal-designate said.

A Christian must cultivate the freedom to transcend himself and avoid "'the terrible self-sufficiency which might lead him to see himself as the incarnate norm of orthodoxy,' for he will put 'the indissoluble bond of Catholic peace' above all things," he said.

"Often we can have no idea as to how God's providence is at work in our lives. We do what we believe to be right and the rest is in the hands of the Lord," he said.

"This is just one synod. There will be others. We do not have to do everything, just take the next step," he said, and those who come after will "go on beginning. How, we do not know. That is God's business."
— Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

Cardinal Fernández updates synod on study group focusing on women's roles

Cardinal Fernández updates synod on study group focusing on women's roles

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis decided the question of ordaining women deacons was not to be discussed at the 2024 Synod of Bishops, and he directed a synod-related study group on women's ministries not to explore the matter, according to the Vatican's doctrinal chief.

"We know that the Holy Father has expressed that at this time the issue of the female diaconate is not mature and has asked that we not entertain this possibility for now," Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, told the synod Oct. 21.

However, he said, the second commission Pope Francis set up in 2020 to study women deacons "will continue to work," and the "partial conclusions" it has reached "will be published when the time is right."

But, the cardinal said, "the Holy Father is very concerned about the role of women in the church and, even before the synod's request" that the matter be studied, Pope Francis "asked the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to explore the possibilities of development without focusing on holy orders," or diaconal ordination.

The dicastery "cannot work in a different direction," Cardinal Fernández said, adding that he agrees with the pope "because thinking about the diaconate for some women does not solve the issue of the millions of women in the church," who serve in hundreds of ways.

While most of what is said in the synod hall is considered confidential, the cardinal's address to the synod was released by the Vatican just days after Cardinal Fernández apologized to synod members for not attending a meeting to discuss the work of his study group on women's ministry.

While the cardinal had not promised to attend the meeting Oct. 18 to speak about the study group's work, about 100 synod participants -- cardinals, bishops, priests, religious and laypeople -- thought he, or at least members of the group, would be there.

In a message sent to synod members after the meeting, Cardinal Fernández wrote that he had been informed of "the displeasure expressed by some members of the synod" that he was not present.

"I myself am sorry for the misunderstanding," he said, adding that he had informed the synod Oct. 9 that he would send two dicastery staff members. However, he offered to meet Oct. 24 with synod members "to listen to their reflections and receive any written documents from them."

According to people present at the meeting Oct. 18, participants had been visibly and vocally upset that the two people Cardinal Fernández sent were not members of the study group and that they did not plan to have a dialogue with participants.

The meeting, like discussions within the synod itself, was meant to be confidential, so participants who spoke about it asked that their names not be used.

One attendee said the frustration mostly focused on the working group's methodology and lack of transparency, particularly that the cardinal had not identified any of the members of the group.

Following the first assembly of the synod on synodality in 2023, Pope Francis set up 10 study groups to reflect more deeply on some of the most controversial or complicated questions raised during the synod process, including the question of women's ministry and decision-making roles in the church.

Pope Francis, in a February letter to Cardinal Mario Grech, general secretary of the synod, said, "It is important that the aforementioned study groups work according to an authentically synodal method," with dialogue and broad participation. He asked that the groups make a preliminary report to the synod in 2024 and that they give him their final reports by June 2025.

After the leaders of the 10 groups gave brief reports to the synod Oct. 2, synod members voted to give up one of their few free afternoons to dialogue with the leaders of the study groups and the meetings were scheduled for Oct. 18.

Synod participants signed up in advance for the meetings so that the Vatican could arrange rooms for them to meet. Cardinal Fernández' group drew the most sign-ups.

Addressing the synod Oct. 21, Cardinal Fernández said women instituted as catechists already can lead Catholic communities in the absence of a priest, but very few dioceses have taken advantage of the possibility. And only "a small percentage" of the world's dioceses have instituted women as lectors and acolytes.

Not to mention, he said, that many dioceses have not made use of the permanent diaconate even for men and when they have, "how many times are they just ordained altar boys?"

"These couple of examples help us understand that rushing to ask for the ordination of deaconesses is not the most important way to promote women today," the cardinal said.

"I am convinced that we can move forward step by step and arrive at very concrete things so that it is understood that there is nothing in women's nature that prevents them from having very important roles in the leadership of the churches," he said. "What really is coming from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped."
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

U.S. church contributes to synod through its diversity, delegate says

U.S. church contributes to synod through its diversity, delegate says

VATICAN CITY — The U.S. delegates at the Synod of Bishops on synodality are contributing to discussions on the future of the Catholic Church by bringing the diversity of the U.S. church to the Vatican, a U.S. synod delegate said.

"I think we do have a lot to contribute to the conversation as an American church," Father Iván Montelongo, a synod member from the Diocese of El Paso, Texas, told Catholic News Service Oct. 22.

The U.S. church, he said, is unique in that it comprises the "richness of people who have lived their Catholicism in different ways in their countries of origin and now find themselves now in the United States."

Father Montelongo was born in the United States but was raised in Mexico before returning during high school; Julia Oseka, another U.S. synod delegate, is a native of Poland studying at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

As a result of its diversity, "we live synodality in very particular ways" in the U.S. church, he said, particularly by including different voices in the governance of the church through the active participation of the laity.

"We have laity in our dioceses, in ecclesiastical offices, in positions of authority already in our dioceses; we have many women chancellors already," he said, while "in some parts of the world, they're not there yet."

A canon lawyer, Father Montelongo said church law leaves "plenty of room to work" on facilitating synodal structures within the universal and U.S. church, such as by expanding parish and diocesan pastoral councils and revitalizing diocesan synods.

"But we're not limited by what canon law establishes; it's a minimum, but a synodal style goes beyond that," he said. For example, he said the church can create more opportunities for consultation by carrying out regular listening sessions through already existing diocesan offices.

The spirit of synodality is especially meant to help the church fulfill its mission, he said, and one place that should happen is with the U.S. church's growing Hispanic population.

In 2022, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) estimated that Hispanics make up about 47% of the total U.S. Catholic population and that the majority of U.S. Catholics under 25 are Hispanic.

"Synodality does encourage us to recognize diversity, to treasure it, value it and to empower everyone for the work of ministry," Father Montelongo said. "But it starts with recognizing the reality, and the reality is that the Hispanic Catholic Church is growing in the United States."

At 31 years old, Father Montelongo is one of the youngest synod members, nearly two-thirds of whom are bishops. He told CNS that as a young priest he hopes to "bring the concerns of ministry out there in the trenches to the synod," particularly in evangelizing among young people.

"Our church is not relevant, in some sense, to young people today," he said. "Some young people don't really care about the institution, but they have that thirst" for spirituality.

He said the synodal process is a "call to really hear the questions of the youth" and to engage with the reasons that they are not going to church, in particular reagarding questions on "sexuality, LGBTQ issues, their hope and need for belonging."

"We need to not be afraid to hear them out," he said, noting that the synod is "an honest way of engaging those questions that are important to them."

"When we ignore them, when we don't acknowledge the elephant in the room, we are doing ourselves and them a disservice," he said.
— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Synod leaders share lessons learned in listening with U.S. students

Synod leaders share lessons learned in listening with U.S. students

Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, center, speaks to the artist who made a mosaic with thoughts about the Synod of Bishops and prayers for the synod written by U.S. university students as Cardinal Mario Grech, kneeling, adds his prayer to the mosaic in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican Oct. 18, 2024. (CNS/Pablo Esparza)VATICAN CITY — The listening that has been part of the Synod of Bishops changes people, can change the Catholic Church and can change the world for the better, four synod members told U.S. university students in Rome.

"The person with a different opinion is not an enemy," Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the relator general of the synod, told about 140 students gathered Oct. 18 in the Vatican's Paul VI Audience Hall at the tables used by synod members.

The students, from 16 Catholic universities in the United States -- along with a small group of young adults from Germany, Austria and Switzerland -- had spent a week in Rome studying synodality and had questions for synod leaders.

The questions included: whether the listening sessions held at the beginning of the synod process reached enough people; why young people who are not involved in the church should care; how they could guarantee that the synod's outcomes would be faithful to the teaching and tradition of the Catholic Church; and would the synod really change anything.

Maltese Cardinal Mario Grech, general secretary of the synod, told the students that "it aches me" when people say the listening sessions reached only a small percentage of Catholics when the outreach for the 2021-2024 synod was much broader than anything achieved before and will keep growing.

Cardinal Hollerich, noting that most of the students were from the United States, told them, "When I see on television about the elections in the States, there are two worlds which seem to be opposed, and you have to be enemy of the other -- that thinking is very far from synodal thinking."

The synodal listening, he said, helps people experience that "together we are part of humanity, we live in the same world, and we have to find common solutions."

Company of Mary Sister Leticia Salazar, a U.S. synod delegate and chancellor of the Diocese of San Bernardino, California, told the students that learning to really listen changes a person.

"We come together, we get to know each other, we pray. We listen to one another," she said. Members hear from people with similar ideas and experiences, but also hear "our differences, our cultures, our way of seeing things, our ways of experiencing God. And at the end, we realize that we are in communion, that we are the church and that we are one church, and we are transformed by that."

"Once you are touched with that experience, you take it with you," she said, "and you prolong it in time, and you share it with the people that you encounter."

Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, one of synod's presidents delegate, said he was asked in his own diocese about the purpose of the listening sessions and whether there were plans to change church teaching.

"The aim of synodality is for the sake of the mission," he said. "And the mission is to announce the Gospel and to invite (people) to a richer, fuller life that comes through Christ, crucified and risen from the dead."

But, he said, "we really do have to be real."

"That is to say, you can't keep announcing the Gospel if you don't have a sense of the reality people are living," the bishop told the students.

The listening is not just about hearing someone's words, he said. It is trying to hear "the realities under the words -- the experiences, the pains, the hopes and the longings, because underneath a lot of the words there is a longing. And one of the church's convictions is that the longing is for a sense of belonging and a sense of communion."

"It is a gift when somebody tells you something about their life," Bishop Flores said. "It's a gift that you should appreciate as something rather sacred."

But the synod also is listening "to the voice of those who have gone before us" -- Catholic tradition -- and, especially, to the Scriptures and to the voice of the Holy Spirit in prayer.

"I trust the Holy Spirit," the bishop said. "I really do. I mean, the church has been messy for 2,000 years, and the Holy Spirit still manages to keep us together. It's bumpy, it's messy, but I have faith that we will be faithful to the teaching of the church."
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Synod says bishops' conferences apply, not create doctrine, cardinal says

Synod says bishops' conferences apply, not create doctrine, cardinal says

Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, N.J., records a message for his archdiocese Oct. 18, 2024, outside the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican where members of the Synod of Bishops meet. (CNS photo/Robert Duncan)VATICAN CITY — While some media reported a move at the Synod of Bishops to allow every national bishops' conference to make Catholic doctrine, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, said that was not precisely what he heard.

"I think there's a general feeling in the hall, at least from where I sit, that absolute doctrinal teaching does not belong to a bishop's conference," he said. "Now that doesn't mean to say they don't have something to say about doctrine (and) the pastoral application of the doctrine of the church" in a particular country.

In fact, the application of doctrine "should be a real interest of the bishops' conference, and we should be able to listen to each other about how we would apply the teachings of the church," he told Catholic News Service outside the synod hall Oct. 18.

Members of the synod, including Cardinal Tobin, spent Oct. 15-18 discussing the "places" where synodality is and can be experienced in the church. One of those places was the national bishops' conference.

The synod working document said that after the first synod session in October 2023, proposals emerged for a "recognition of Episcopal Conferences as ecclesial subjects endowed with doctrinal authority."

The line set off a debate and even some alarms by bishops who were concerned the statement basically meant a nation's bishops could create Catholic doctrine and it could differ from what was taught as Catholic truth in another country.

Cardinal Tobin noted that in 2025 Christians will celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the origin of the Nicene Creed.

"No bishops' conference should ever tinker with the Creed," he said. "That's what holds us together."

But the cardinal said he hoped bishops' conferences, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, would listen more to people in their dioceses and to each other to "apply the doctrine to the concrete situations" of the church in their country.

"We have to listen, certainly, to the Word of God and the tradition of our church, and we have to listen to each other," he said.

Synod members, he said, have found "a consensus that without the support of the bishops' conference, synodality will not really enter the life of a national church."

The national and regional conferences of bishops blossomed after the Second Vatican Council, but their stature and influence began shrinking in the late 1990s, when St. John Paul II and his closest aides tried to rein in the conferences' perceived power over the authority and ministry of a local bishop for his diocese.

In 1998, St. John Paul issued an apostolic letter, "Apostolos Suos" on the theological and juridical nature of bishops' conferences. He said bishops' conferences could issue statements on doctrinal and moral issues only if approved unanimously by conference members.

But from the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has given a higher profile to bishops' conferences and their teaching authority and has underscored that by frequently citing the teaching of different national conferences in his own encyclicals and apostolic exhortations.

In his 2013 apostolic exhortation, "The Joy of the Gospel," Pope Francis wrote that the Second Vatican Council affirmed that "episcopal conferences are in a position 'to contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit.'" But, he said, "this desire has not been fully realized, since a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated."
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Synod members look at how synodality relates to papal primacy

Synod members look at how synodality relates to papal primacy

Synod participants attend a public theological and pastoral forum about the primacy of the pope in a synodal church in Rome, Oct. 16, 2024. (CNS/Lola Gomez)ROME — Encouraging greater "synodal" practices in the Catholic Church should help the church find a greater balance between the power of the pope and the power of local bishops in their dioceses, said theologians participating in the Synod of Bishops.

The balance between the authority and jurisdiction of the pope as the bishop of Rome and the authority of local bishops -- a balance that would allow for greater diversity within the universal church -- also would benefit efforts to restore Christian unity since for many other Christian churches, the way popes currently exercise their primacy is an obstacle to unity, the theologians said.

An adjustment in the balance would recognize that the bishops are successors of the apostles and vicars of Christ, not vicars of the pope, said Father José San Jose Prisco, dean of the faculty of canon law at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain, and a theological expert at the synod.

The priest, two other theologians participating in the Synod of Bishops and an Australian archbishop spoke at a synod forum Oct. 16 exploring the relationship between the exercise of papal primacy and synodality.

Father Dario Vitali, coordinator of theological experts assisting the synod and professor of dogmatic theology at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, told forum attendees that in very broad terms the first millennium of Christianity was marked by "synodality" and local autonomy as the faith spread throughout the world with almost centrifugal force. For Catholics, the second millennium was marked by a greater emphasis on the universal jurisdiction of the pope in a centripetal push to ensure unity.

"In the third millennium, we hope to be able to speak of both synodality and primacy," he said, respecting local expressions of the faith and local priorities, but also recognizing the ministry of the pope as one that serves and preserves the unity of the universal church.

Questions about the exercise of papal primacy are not new or unique to the synod. In his 1995 encyclical, "Ut Unum Sint," ("That They May Be One"), St. John Paul II called for an ecumenical exploration of ways the pope could exercise his ministry as a service to the unity of all Christians.

The global process of listening and discernment that have characterized the current synod "can be of service to the pope in his role and also of assistance to the bishops themselves," said Archbishop Timothy Costelloe of Perth, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference and a member of the synod.

However, the archbishop said, the "circular" process of the synod -- all members, including the bishops and the pope, listening to each other, discerning in prayer, sharing their concerns, listening more -- "can easily become a linear process" where the faithful are consulted, the bishops "discern the presence, or otherwise, of harmony between what the faithful have said and what the church teaches" and then they submit their conclusions and proposals to the pope for approval.

"The problem with this understanding is not that it's completely wrong," the archbishop said, but that it separates church members into three distinct groups -- the faithful, which does not include the bishops or priests, "the bishops who act as judges of what the people have said, and the pope, who simply receives at the end the final outcomes in which, in fact, he's had really very little part to play in the process."

"Such an approach, if rigidly followed, perpetuates a pyramidal structuring of the church," Archbishop Costelloe said, "and such a structuring of the church is just not in harmony with the vision of Pope Francis or with the theology of Vatican II."

Catherine Clifford, a theologian and member of the synod from Canada, told the forum that "recent developments in the practice of synodality in the global Catholic Church reflect a shift in Catholic ecclesiology and practice away from an almost exclusive emphasis on the personal or primatial dimension of the bishop of Rome's office and toward a restoration of greater balance with the collegial and communal dimensions in the exercise of that office."

If the Synod of Bishops becomes "a more effective instrument for listening to the life of the local churches," she said, it can be a tool that helps "the bishop of Rome to serve the communion of faith and proclaim it in more effective ways, discerning and taking decisions that express the faith, the sense of faith of the whole church."
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

A synodal church respects cultural differences, Chinese bishop says

A synodal church respects cultural differences, Chinese bishop says

Bishops Joseph Yang Yongqiang of Hangzhou, center, and Vincent Zhan Silu of Funing-Mindong, left, the two members of the Synod of Bishops from mainland China give Pope Francis a gift during a break in the meeting of the Synod of Bishops in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican Oct. 2, 2024. (CNS/Vatican Media)VATICAN CITY — Being a synodal church that respects the cultural expressions of different nations can go a long way to helping Catholics evangelize in China, said one of two bishops from the mainland participating in the Synod of Bishops.

"Being a synodal church engaged in the mission of evangelization means respecting and listening to the voices of different stories, cultures and traditions in the journey of seeking humanity's ultimate goal, which is God," Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu of Funing-Mindong told the synod.

While Pope Francis has asked for confidentiality regarding what synod members say and hear in the synod hall, Vatican News published an article Oct. 17 about the two Chinese bishops' greetings to the synod. The article noted that until the Vatican and China signed an agreement on the appointment of bishops in 2018, no bishops from the mainland had been authorized to attend a synod.

Vatican News reported that Bishop Zhan focused his remarks on the history of Christianity in China, speaking particularly about the Jesuit missionary, Father Matteo Ricci, who arrived in China in the late 16th century, and his "experiment" to "adapt the Christian Gospel to different human practices."

But, the bishop said, "the discernment between cultural differences and the need to preserve the authenticity of the Christian faith became a source of confusion for missionaries in China. This confusion led to the famous 'Rites Controversy,' which took place precisely in my diocese, in Mindong."

The controversy focused on Father Ricci's and other Jesuits' conviction that the common Chinese rites of ancestor veneration were social and cultural, not religious, and so even baptized Catholics could continue the custom. The Vatican's doctrinal office disagreed.

"From a historical perspective," Bishop Zhan said, "one of the reasons for this setback was that the church ignored the differences and complementarity of human cultures."

The bishop told the synod that church leaders must learn "humbly from both historical and current experiences" when discerning how to approach new cultural challenges.

Vatican News reported that the other synod bishop from mainland China, Bishop Joseph Yang Yongqiang of Hangzhou, gave the other synod delegates more of a general description of the Catholic Church in China today.

"The church in China is the same as the Catholic Church in other countries of the world: We belong to the same faith, share the same baptism, and we are all faithful to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church," he said.

"We effectively adapt to society, serve it, adhere to the direction of the 'sinicization' of Catholicism, and preach the Good News," the bishop said. Some observers see "sinicization" as an effort to incorporate more Chinese cultural influences into the church and its liturgy, while others see it as an attempt by the communist government to impose its ideology on the church and exercise full control over it.

Bishop Yang told synod members, "We strive to be like 'light and salt' for world peace and the promotion of a community where humanity can enjoy a shared destiny" and "we promote development through various types of projects."
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Synodality takes time, members say, and tension is natural part of it

Synodality takes time, members say, and tension is natural part of it

VATICAN CITY — Three weeks into the second session of the Synod of Bishops, journalists wanted to know what outcomes the synod members were moving toward, but several synod members said it is too soon to tell.

The 2021-2024 process for the synod on synodality "is preparing us to be women and men capable of listening to others who think differently, who see things in a different way," Canadian Cardinal Gérald C. Lacroix of Québec told reporters Oct. 17.

"If we continue as the people of God, as a church, to work in this direction, I think we will give the world a witness that it is possible to listen to each other and to make good judgments, to make good choices," the cardinal said at the synod's daily briefing for journalists.

But asked about the synod's thinking on specific topics -- ranging from whether parish pastoral councils should be mandatory rather than simply encouraged or whether bishops' conferences should have greater authority in making decisions about liturgical translations -- he and the other synod participants said the process has not finished yet.

Cardinal Lacroix told the reporters that some of the issues being discussed, including the power of bishops' conferences, have created tension in the synod hall, "and this is good" because it is a sign of life, and a sign of the variety of cultures and experiences represented by the synod members.

"We can't just debate and decide, we have to reflect," the cardinal said.

Bishop Pedro Cipolini of Santo André, Brazil, told reporters, "Sometimes ideas need time to mature. The church's challenge isn't to respond to all questions but to be faithful and respond to the Holy Spirit."

But one thing is clear, the bishop said, the synod recognizes that "changes are necessary in the face of everything that has been treated in the synod. Some things must change."

"In ecclesial language, in biblical language, the word 'change' translates as conversion," and that is a process that takes time.

The bishop said he saw three areas where synod members agree there must be change or conversion: a pastoral conversion that recognizes it is no longer enough to evangelize within the walls of the parish, but the church must reach out, including digitally; "structural conversion," in the way parishes, dioceses, bishops' conferences or even the Roman Curia are organized, "and this is more challenging"; and conversion to a "synodal spirituality," that is focused on Jesus and on concretely witnessing to him in daily life.

"It is necessary to learn to give thanks for old things that have already fulfilled their function, and to welcome the new that the Holy Spirit is indicating at every moment in this world," the bishop said.
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Synod delegates discuss empowering local churches

Synod delegates discuss empowering local churches

ROME — As the Synod of Bishops on synodality engaged in conversation on the church's hierarchy, synod delegates examined the relationship between the local and universal church during a public theological and pastoral forum.

Myriam Wijlens, a theological expert at the synod and canon law professor at the University of Erfurt in Germany, said that since the beginning of the synodal process in 2021, "the people of God have voiced with a remarkable consistency that diocesan and parish pastoral councils should be made obligatory."

But beyond making such structures mandatory, "they desire that canonical norms make them into true vehicles of being a synodal church," she said at the forum in Rome Oct. 16.

Currently, the Code of Canon Law states, "If the diocesan bishop judges it opportune after he has heard the presbyteral council, a pastoral council is to be established in each parish" with the council presided over by the pastor.

To respond to the desire voiced by the people of God, Wijlens said that the majority of members on such councils should not be appointed by the diocesan bishop or parish priest, rather "they need to be elected or appointed in a different way."

Additionally, she said "provisions can be made to respond to the request that there must be a majority of laypersons, with an adequate presence of women, young people and people living in conditions of poverty or experiencing other forms of marginalization."

Wiljens noted that just as a diocesan presbyteral council has a right to be consulted before the bishop can act in specific cases, such as altering a parish or building a new church, "a provision could be made that on certain or the same topic, the diocesan pastoral council must be heard as well."

She added that such provisions "do not contradict current law and could already be considered in the statutes that bishops can issue within their local church today."

Father Antonio Autiero, another synod expert and emeritus professor of moral theology at the University of Münster in Germany, discussed the possibility of making the lived experience of the faithful more central in the church's decision-making and application of doctrine.

"The link between faith and morality cannot be conceived in a linear and deductive way," he said. "We have done that for too long without considering the fact that human practices and the invocation of the moral good correspond to the culture with which people identify."

"Local churches, as a place of living out the church, offer the horizon in which doctrinal aspects regarding human practices, and therefore also moral conduct and legal frameworks, can be authentically generated and then offered as points of truth for the life of other churches as well," he said.

Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, said that "local churches are not mere parts or administrative units of a whole, nor is the universal church the sum of all of those parts as if it were a federation or a grouping together of local communities."

Instead, "the mysterious being of the church of Christ is truly present in each and every one of its local churches, thus achieving its fundamental unity in the richness of a legitimate local diversity."

The cardinal observed that in various parts of the world, "synodal experiences are becoming more like political assemblies rather than true synodal encounters." Referring to the current synod on synodality, he emphasized the importance of invoking the Holy Spirit in discussions about the church's future and "seeking the Spirit who lives among us, but to whom we must remain attentive."
— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Consensus among members plays major role at synod, theologians say

Consensus among members plays major role at synod, theologians say

From left, Father José San Jose Prisco, dean of the faculty of canon law at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, Father Ormond Rush, a professor at the Australian Catholic University and theological expert, Father Dario Vitali, coordinator of theological experts assisting the synod and professor of dogmatic theology at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, and Klara-Antonia Csiszar, a professor of pastoral theology at the Catholic University of Linz, Austria, attend a press briefing on the synod at the Vatican Oct. 16, 2024. (CNS/Lola Gomez)VATICAN CITY — Members of the synod on synodality are only moving along the paths where there is consensus, said a group of theologians assisting the synod.

However, while there may not be consensus on several issues when the second session of the Synod of Bishops ends Oct. 27, those questions will not disappear but will be studied further, the theologians told reporters during a Vatican briefing Oct. 16.

Father Dario Vitali, a professor of dogmatic theology at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, is the coordinator of theological experts assisting the synod. He attended the briefing with two other theologians helping the synod: Father Ormond Rush, a professor at the Australian Catholic University, and Klara-Antonia Csiszar, a professor of pastoral theology at the Catholic University of Linz, Austria.

Theology plays an important role in helping the church learn and develop a new synodal style and culture, Csiszar said through an interpreter. The theological experts have been present throughout the synod sessions to assist members in this "learning process."

They provide guidance where there are gaps, help motivate participants when they do not see any possibilities for moving forward or when exhaustion often occurs, and help with criticism and constructive feedback, she said.

For example, Father Rush said, he was recently called to help one of the small working groups that found some confusion about the notion of "sensus fidei" or the "supernatural sense of the faith" of the whole people of God, a Latin term which appeared in the Second Vatican Council's 1964 document, "Lumen Gentium."

He said he explained "how through faith and baptism each individual is given this gift, not only of 'fides,' faith, but also of a 'sensus fidei,' a sense of the faith. That is, this capacity to apply it and interpret it in daily life."

The synod on synodality is about listening to the Holy Spirit, to the word of God and to the experience and the "sensus fidei" of each individual from many parts of the world, "and to come to some kind of consensus in the church," Father Rush said.

Theology's fundamental task, he said, is helping "Christian communities interpret and apply, for a particular time or a particular place, the meaning of the Christian Gospel."

With its conversations in the Spirit, the synod "provides an indication, we could say, a horizon and a direction for the journey, and that is expressed through consensus," Father Vitali said. "Consensus is exactly the concrete way by which … the church can walk today."

This is important for the third phase of the synodal process, he said, which is giving what came out of the second session back to the particular churches and the bishops' conferences for their reaction or "reception."

"Certainly, there is pushback on the very notion of synodality," Father Rush said, and perhaps that pushback also comes from the fact there have not been concrete responses at the synod's two sessions to several questions that have been raised.

"This is the matter of culture where particular cultures have issues with regards to, for example, the role of women and particularly these issues of LGBTQI+ and so on," he said.

People at the synod have been speaking up about gender and identity, he said, but there have also been others "who were uncomfortable about this. And so probably even over two sessions of the synod, there won't be a consensus of the whole church."

However, Father Rush said, those questions that have no consensus "won't go away."

"There are ongoing study groups that will be looking at these issues" as well as the teaching authority of episcopal conferences, which some are opposed to because of concern over what happens if the teachings are different in different parts of the world, he added.

A synodal assembly expresses a direction, Father Vitali said, and a synod has the authority, freedom and duty to study all issues and do "research within the church, which is theology."

"Theology certainly performs this task of advancing a deepening of the various issues so that it will be able to lead in the future toward a consensus. Where there might be consensus, there would open up a different scenario for the journey of God's people."

— Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

Holy Spirit guides faithful to be synodal, correct others, cardinal says

Holy Spirit guides faithful to be synodal, correct others, cardinal says

VATICAN CITY — The faithful will know how to avoid being swayed by worldly standards and concerns when they believe and trust more deeply that Jesus and the Holy Spirit will always help and guide them, Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes of Mexico City told participants at the Synod of Bishops.

Humanity's "selfish disorder is the cause of evil actions. But how can this tendency be overcome? By learning to let ourselves be guided by the Holy Spirit," by getting to know Jesus Christ and by living daily "the testimony of his life and teachings," he said in his homily during a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica with synod participants Oct. 16.

By following the Spirit, the faithful will obtain the gifts of "love, joy, peace, generosity, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control," the cardinal said.

The faithful will also acquire, "as Jesus puts it in the Gospel, the freedom to intervene and correct those who have gone astray, the misguided or the pretentious, who hold themselves up as models for others or make requirements that they themselves do not uphold," he said.

It is opportune, the cardinal said, "to strengthen our confidence in divine help so that we may face with hope the different presences and behaviors, that, both inside and outside the church, criticize and hinder the application of the synodal life in our ecclesial communities," he told the participants, who are attending the second session of the synod on synodality Oct. 2-27.

In fact, he added, it is worth asking "how committed we are to living and promoting synodality in our own areas of ecclesial and social responsibility."

"Let us not waver, brothers and sisters, let us act coherently, and we will obtain the fruits of the Holy Spirit," he said. Through obedience to the Spirit's call, the faithful will perceive "the divine intervention, which will often surprise us, achieving much more than what we humanly expected."

By learning to recognize divine assistance as one carries out one's own daily responsibilities, the faithful will also be able to "recognize the benefits of the Holy Spirit in others and to encourage the members of our communities, in the face of the usual difficulties, as good disciples, not to lose heart along the way," Cardinal Aguiar said.

"We will also gain the spiritual freedom to intervene through fraternal correction, solidarity and earnest help for our neighbors in need," he said, and "we will develop as people who trust in the Lord Jesus, who know how to avoid being guided by worldly criteria, and we will be happy."

"May we all experience the joy and happiness of always trusting in the Lord Jesus, the way, the truth and the life," he said.

— Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

Synod on Amazon opened the way for synod on synodality, cardinal says

Synod on Amazon opened the way for synod on synodality, cardinal says

VATICAN CITY — The Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region, which met in Rome in 2019, paved the way for the current synod on synodality, said the region's top cardinal.

Before the synodal process began in 2021, "We were a church on a mission, now we are a synodal church on a mission," Cardinal Leonardo Steiner of Manaus, Brazil, said at a Vatican briefing Oct. 15. "The synod on the Amazon helped open up this experience (of synodalty) and the participation of everyone."

The synod on synodality is more focused on how the entire church community can learn to listen, discern and respond to God's will and carry out the mission of the church than at specific issues. But part of that is looking at ways to expand the role and responsibility of all the baptized in the life and mission of the church.

In contrast, with only 172 priests to serve about 1,000 communities in the region, the synod on the Amazon did discuss specifics such as the possibility of ordaining married men and opening the diaconate to women as part of expanding the role of the laity.

"For more than 100 years, the communities in our region have lived without the presence of priests," Cardinal Steiner said, and yet, "the communities remained alive, organized, praying, celebrating and having their own ways of prayer" thanks to the commitment and faith of laypeople, and especially women.

"Women are the ones who have led the communities forward, and today they are also leading our communities. Several women in our archdiocese receive ministries," including official recognition as ministers of the Eucharist, ministers of the Word of God and community leaders, he said.

Bishops in the Amazon region are now proposing to some very remote communities "to receive and be able to celebrate some sacraments, such as baptism, without the presence of a priest," he said. When it comes to day-to-day ministry, "many of our women are true deaconesses, without having received the imposition of the hands."

Cardinal Steiner said they would like to call these women "deaconesses," but they do not want to "confuse them with the ordained ministry," and so, for now, they have not found a title that is "suitable."

"But it is admirable," he said, "how much women are responsible for our church."

"Our church would not be the church it is without the presence of women," the cardinal said.

Cardinal Steiner said he believes that if the female diaconate existed in the church in the past, "why not restore" it as was done after the Second Vatican Council "in restoring the permanent diaconate for men."

"We mustn't stop reflecting on these issues" as part of a continued exploration of "the fundamental mission of women in the church," he said. It's not a "gender issue, it is simply a matter of vocation," the vocation of women in the church and "in our communities."

Speaking about the issue of admitting married men to the priesthood, Cardinal Steiner said, for some places, "this would not be a difficulty."

Pope Francis "did not close the question," he added. However, the pope is very aware this is problematic elsewhere and is sensitive about "the communion of the church," therefore, "he didn't want to take that step."

The cardinal said dialogue should continue in a way that shows the importance of the local community rather than just "looking at the church as a whole."

"The church only exists because there is the community, and that small community forms the parish, and the parishes form a diocese and then there is the universal church. Maybe we need to go a little deeper into this question of ministeriality and community," he said.

— Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

Synod begins looking at institutional changes to promote synodality

Synod begins looking at institutional changes to promote synodality

VATICAN CITY — If members of the Synod of Bishops are serious about sharing their experience of "synodality" with all members of the Catholic Church, then they must identify concrete ways to do so, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich told members.

"If we keep this treasure only for ourselves, we transform it into a privilege" rather than a service to the whole church, Cardinal Hollerich, the synod relator general, told members Oct. 15 as they began discussing the third and final part of the synod's working document.

Titled "places," the section focused on promoting synodality -- listening to each other more attentively and cooperating more readily -- "from the perspective of the places that are the tangible contexts for our embodied relationships, marked by their variety, plurality and interconnection, and rooted in the foundation of the profession of faith, resisting human temptations to abstract universalism."

Cardinal Hollerich said the challenge is to make sure members of the church who are not present in the synod hall can experience synodality "not only through our recounting it, but through the renewal of our churches."

"The aim of our work in the coming days," he said, "is to propose instruments that make that easier."

The 368 synod members were to discuss the "places" section of the working document through the morning of Oct. 18. The final week of the synod would be devoted to discussing, amending and approving a final document from the gathering. Voting on the final document was scheduled for the evening of Oct. 26 and the closing synod Mass was to be celebrated Oct. 27.

Before Cardinal Hollerich's introduction, Benedictine Mother Maria Ignazia Angelini, a theologian and spiritual adviser to the synod, encouraged synod members to recognize how faith always is lived in a concrete place with specific cultural influences, but also how Jesus broke through rigged walls of place, class and culture.

"If the 'place' of the church is always a concrete space-time of gathering, the journey of the Gospel in the world goes from threshold to threshold: it shuns being static, but also any 'holy alliance' with the cultural contexts of the age," she said. "It inhabits them and is led by its life principle -- the Spirit of the Lord -- to transcend them."

"We all need to feel a sense of belonging," Cardinal Hollerich said, "but this need is met through relationships" that are less tied to a specific place -- for instance, a parish -- than they were in the past, especially if one considers relationships formed and maintained primarily online.

"What does this mean for the fulfillment of our mission of proclaiming the Gospel?" the cardinal asked synod members. "In what ways must we rethink our institutions 'in the logic of missionary service,' which takes place in a different context than in the past? What institutional and organizational forms need to be changed and how?"

— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Listening is key to changing church structures, synod members say

Listening is key to changing church structures, synod members say

VATICAN CITY — Since the 2018 Synod of Bishops on young people, listening has emerged as a central element in overcoming the structural and cultural barriers to unity and participation in the Catholic Church, synod members said.

Recent synods convened at the Vatican as well as the worldwide synod on synodality have "shown us the value of listening as a common thread in any process of humanization," said Sister Liliana Franco Echeverri, a member of the Company of Mary and president of the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious.

Sister Franco highlighted the 2019 synod on the Amazon as an example of how "listening leads to conversion." The creation of the Amazonian Ecclesial Conference was proposed at that synod, and it was formally erected by Pope Francis in 2021. Members of the conference include bishops, consecrated religious, priests and deacons, Indigenous people and lay Catholic leaders, each nominated by their bishops' conferences.

"Truly the power to create transformation, to modify attitudes or structures, lies in listening to God and to the grassroots, to reality," Sister Franco said, noting that the various synods convened so far have acted as "laboratories" that experiment with the church's capacity to listen.

"Listening is positioning itself as the way of understanding what the narrative is that God wants to tell us human beings," she said. "Listening gives us the possibility of drawing close to one another and to God's love more serenely, sincerely and reverently. Listening truly transforms us and converts us, and I believe we are still in the process of learning that."

The challenge for the church, she said, is to understand that listening is "the path to our conversion and even the path to credibility in moments that we experience as a church and as a society."

Rwandan Bishop Edouard Sinayobye of Cyangugu said that the listening at the root of synodality has assisted the church in Rwanda advance in its mission of reconciliation 30 years after the genocide that killed some 800,000 people in his country.

While the killing ended in July 1994, Bishop Sinayobye said its legacy is still felt "as if it happened yesterday," and that the church continues working to heal people. Catholics are the largest religious group in Rwanda, making up 40% of the population, according to a 2022 U.S. State Department report.

"It is not easy to talk about reconciliation in a country torn apart by genocide, because one must accompany both the persecutor and the victim, and we do this in every parish," he said. "This synod has helped us considerably, it is a space in which we have deepened our approach to respond to this challenge of reconciliation" by working to "unify Rwandans and to help them live in a spirit of fraternity, in a communal and synodal way."

The synod "is reinforcing our pastoral mission and our way of living in Rwanda after the tragedy of genocide," he said.

Latvian Archbishop Zbignevs Stankevics of Riga said that ultimately the task of the synod is to "unlock the gifts and charisms of every baptized person," promoting co-responsibility and the "decentralization" of the church "but not in a secular or democratic way, in a way of ecclesial and spiritual communion."

Sister Franco said that to ensure the full participation of each person in the church, the church's relational structures must be more closely studied to prevent abusive dynamics from arising.

The whole synodal process has highlighted a need to revise relationships, she said, and is calling the church to opt for placing "a culture of care at the heart of the church, for a way of relating to each other that is more similar to the way of Jesus."

— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Mission is common goal of synod and ecumenism, pope says

Mission is common goal of synod and ecumenism, pope says

VATICAN CITY — Halfway through the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis and synod participants prayed that God would "remove the divisions between Christians" so that they could proclaim the Gospel together.

The pope presided over a candlelight vigil Oct. 11, the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, and texts from council documents introduced the prayers of praise and the prayers of petition.

The synod participants at the prayer service included the 16 "fraternal delegates" representing Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant churches, as well as the Rome-based representatives of the Anglican, Methodist and Reformed churches to the Holy See and other Christian ministers and faithful in the city.

Pope Francis did not read the meditation he prepared for the service, although it was distributed and published on the Vatican website.

Halfway through the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis wrote, participants wanted to "express our shame at the scandal of division among Christians, the scandal of our failure to bear common witness to the Lord Jesus."

"This synod is an opportunity to do better, to overcome the walls that still exist between us," the pope wrote.

The vigil took place in the Square of the Roman Protomartyrs, just south of St. Peter's Basilica, which is the site where St. Peter and other Christians were martyred in the first century under the Emperor Nero.

The setting, the pope wrote, should "remind us that today, too, in many parts of the world, Christians of different traditions are laying down their lives together for their faith in Jesus Christ, embodying an ecumenism of blood."

"Their witness speaks more powerfully than any words, because unity is born of the cross of the Lord," Pope Francis said.

Noting the anniversary of Vatican II, he said the council "marked the official entry of the Catholic Church into the ecumenical movement," which was begun by mainline Protestant churches out of a conviction that the lack of unity among Christians was harming their ability to preach the Gospel.

The goal of the work for Christian unity is the same as the goal for the synod on synodality, Pope Francis wrote. Both are focused on the mission Jesus gave to all his disciples to share the good news of salvation with everyone.

And, he said, in both ecumenical dialogue and the synodal process, "it is not so much a matter of creating something as it is of welcoming and making fruitful the gift we have already received" and sharing God-given gifts with each other for the benefit of all.

"Just as we do not know beforehand what the outcome of the synod will be, neither do we know exactly what the unity to which we are called will be like," he said. However, Christians know that unity will be a gift of the Holy Spirit, and it will not destroy all differences between them, but allow diversity to enrich everyone.

Like the effort to make the Catholic Church more synodal -- marked by respectful listening to the Spirit and each other and by a shared commitment to mission -- the search for Christian unity, the pope said, "is a journey: it grows gradually as it progresses. It grows through mutual service, through the dialogue of life, through the cooperation of all Christians that 'sets in clearer relief the features of Christ the Servant.'"

"We need to pursue the path of unity by virtue of our love for Christ and for all the people we are called to serve," Pope Francis wrote. "As we travel along this path, let us never allow difficulties to stop us! Let us trust the Holy Spirit, who draws us to unity in the harmony of a multifaceted diversity."

— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Synod seeks to expand consultations on women's ministry, diaconate

Synod seeks to expand consultations on women's ministry, diaconate

VATICAN CITY —The Vatican group studying the question of women's ministry, including the ordination of women to the diaconate, will expand its consultative phase to include women who do not serve as consultors to the dicastery in charge of the study group, synod officials announced.

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith which is in charge of the study group, announced in a message to synod members Oct. 9 that in addition to receiving input from the dicastery's appointed consultors, the dicastery will consult other women as well as receive input from participants in the Synod of Bishops. It was not specified who the outside women consultors are.

Among the 27 consultors to the dicastery listed in the Vatican yearbook, four are women, and among the 28 new consultors appointed by Pope Francis Sept. 23, six are women.

In his message to synod members, read to journalists at a news conference Oct. 9, Cardinal Fernández said the dicastery would also receive input from all members and theologians of the Synod of Bishops in the coming months. Among synod participants, 82 non-member experts are participating in the synod as theologians, facilitators and communicators.

Additionally, synod members voted to have a dialogue with leaders of the 10 study groups assigned to study complicated topics Oct. 18, and Cardinal Fernández said two people from his dicastery will receive written and oral input from synod members on the topic of women's ministry in the church.

In a written report delivered to synod members Oct. 2, Cardinal Fernández had said that at this point, his dicastery "judges that there is still no room for a positive decision by the magisterium regarding the access of women to the diaconate, understood as a degree of the sacrament of holy orders."

At the Vatican news conference Oct. 9, Belgian Deacon Geert De Cubber, the only synod member who is a permanent deacon, said that incorporating more input from deacons would benefit the synod proceedings and members' understanding of how the role of deacons can fit into service of the church.

Referencing a criticism of last year's synod assembly that not enough attention was given to the reality of parish priests, and the Vatican's response of inviting more than 200 parish priests to Rome to offer their input for the drafting of the working document for the synod assembly, Deacon De Cubber said, "It could be a good idea to bring together some deacons."

"Inevitably, you have to consult deacons on the diaconate," he said, but also, "you have to involve their wives, you have to involve their kids."

Deacon De Cubber said the church needs to have a larger discussion about vocations in the church, one which includes analysis of the role of priests and bishops, since, for him, the diaconate is "not at all a preparation for becoming a priest."

He added that the topic of women deacons did come up during synod discussions despite the topic being assigned to a study group.

Archbishop Luis Fernando Ramos Pérez of Puerto Montt, Chile, noted that there are more permanent deacons in his archdiocese than diocesan priests, and he said that deacons offer an "extraordinary service" to the church and should not be confused with "junior priests."

— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Synod members vote to dialogue with study groups set up by pope

Synod members vote to dialogue with study groups set up by pope

VATICAN CITY — Members of the Synod of Bishops have voted to give up one of their few free afternoons to "dialogue" with the leaders of the study groups Pope Francis set up to reflect on important questions raised by the synod in 2023.

Paolo Ruffini, president of the synod's communications committee, said synod leaders received Pope Francis' approval for putting the idea to a vote Oct. 5. It was approved overwhelmingly, and the dialogue is scheduled for Oct. 18.

The study groups are investigating questions such as how bishops are chosen in the Latin-rite church, how to improve seminary education, how to improve relations between bishops and the religious communities that minister in their dioceses, ministry to LGBTQ Catholics and possible ministry roles for women in the Catholic Church.

Short videos about the work of each of the 10 groups and a brief report on what had been accomplished thus far were shared with synod members Oct. 2. Synod officials also said that synod members and any other Catholic could share their perspective or concerns with any group by writing to the synod office -- This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. -- before June, when the groups are due to report to Pope Francis.

At a synod briefing for reporters Oct. 7, none of the participants would confirm a rumor that the synod vote to dialogue with the group leaders was provoked specifically by concern over the report from the group looking at women's roles in the church.

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and chair of that group, had told members of the synod Oct. 2 that the question of ordaining women deacons was not yet "mature."

Sister Mary T. Barron, president of the International Union of Superiors General and leader of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles, told reporters at the briefing Oct. 7 that synod members felt the reports were "very short and we wanted to know about what is actually happening."

And, she said, with some groups -- for example, the one looking at relations between bishops and religious -- "we'd like to know more about who's involved and be perhaps more directly involved going forward."

Sister Barron also said that in the synod "I find that there are as many men convinced of the need to change the position in the church with regards to the participation of women" as there are women.

Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai said the issues were not "taken off the table" when the pope set up the study groups in March, but Pope Francis was concerned that synod members would focus so much on those issues that they would not "focus sufficiently on synodality itself."

The cardinal said he was asked repeatedly -- sometimes with "alarm" -- over the past several months about the study groups and specifically about the group on women's ministry and whether the pope set up the groups because he wanted to avoid having the synod discuss the question.

"I said, 'No, we don't want to avoid that; we've entrusted it into a particular group, but we do not want to focus on that'" to the exclusion of other issues, he told reporters.

— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Hot-button issues raised by Vatican synod called 'a mechanism' to understand synodal method

Hot-button issues raised by Vatican synod called 'a mechanism' to understand synodal method

VATICAN CITY— The goal of the second and final meeting of the Synod on Synodality underway at the Vatican is understanding and exercising synodality in the church, rather than immediately resolving specific issues, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' synodality expert said.

Julia McStravog, the USCCB's senior adviser for the synod, said that while some people may be disappointed that the synod will not resolve or otherwise move the conversation related to several controversial issues, she thinks that the work of the synod is, in part, "to help us prepare to answer these questions" and others like them.

At last year's meeting, much of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops' external attention centered on controversial questions such as changes to seminary formation, the possibility of women's ordination and ministry expectations for LGBTQ-identifying Catholics, topics that surfaced in worldwide consultations during the synod's two-year preparation process.

While synod preparatory documents noted such topics, earlier this year Pope Francis entrusted their discussion to 10 study groups, effectively taking them off the table for the synod assembly's second-year discussion. Leaders of those study groups reported on their progress on the synod's opening day Oct. 2. Those presentations accompanied brief videos about each study group and published written reports. The study groups' work is expected to conclude in June.

"From my perspective, it was never about those hot-button issues anyway, and so the U.S. synod team never approached it with this assumption or understanding that any of those topics would be resolved through the synod or by the synod," she told OSV News Sept. 27.

"I -- and the team -- really understood them to be mechanisms in which to help us figure out what synodality looks like," she said. "They're incredibly important questions, all of which could have their own synods, have their own three-year consultation process just on the one question out of the many."

On the topic of whether women could be ordained deacons, for example, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and head of a study group exploring the topic, told the synod assembly that Pope Francis "does not consider the question mature."

"The opportunity for a deepening remains open, but in the mind of the Holy Father, there are other issues still to be deepened and resolved before rushing to speak of a possible diaconate for some women," he said. "Otherwise, the diaconate becomes a kind of consolation for some women, and the most decisive question of the participation of women in the church remains unanswered."

McStravog sees synodality as a tool to help Catholics constructively engage complicated and potentially divisive issues.

"We're not ready to answer these questions in a synodal way," she said. "We're still figuring out what exactly synodality looks like in the church, and that's really what I think they're going to be doing in the second part (of the synod), is like, what are the building blocks to set this foundation to have these conversations, to really begin that. It really is a culture shift, and culture shifts are not fun, they're not headline grabbing … they're gradual."

Richard Coll, executive director for Justice, Peace and Human Development at the USCCB and one of several lay synod delegates representing the U.S., said that his experience at the first synod meeting and the interim has laid the foundation to "really focus on what the 'instrumentum laboris' (the synod's working document) is calling us to do, which is to really refine our understanding of the process of synodality, and see how we can implement at each level of our church life some of the benefits and some of the fruits of the synodal process."

And while the synod is expected to conclude Oct. 27, "the synod might be over, but synodality is not over," McStravog said.

That implementation "is dependent upon their pastors and upon their bishops," McStravog said. "How are we really going to get the pastors and bishops to embrace synodality in a way so that it does move the people in the pews?"

"So much depends on the openness to the synodal process at each level," Coll added, noting that he is aware of U.S. parishes that have "a great deal of interest" in synodality and plans to hold meetings on the topic after the synod's conclusion, and others "where the word 'synodality' never pops up."

"That's the kind of challenge that we will experience going forward to try to make it possible for those who really do want to live in the synodal experience to have the support of communities in the parish and diocese that will make it possible," he said.

In his opening comments to the synod assembly Oct. 2, Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of General Secretary of the Synod, described the synod as "essentially a school of discernment."

"It is the church gathered together with Peter to discern together," he said. "A synodal church is a proposal to today's society: discernment is the fruit of a mature exercise of synodality as a style and method," defining "ecclesial discernment" as "the listening to one another to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church."

Clergy and laypeople share a responsibility for synodality, McStravog said, "so things not being done in a synodal way is kind of denying folks the exercise of their responsibility towards the church, or exercise of co-responsibility, and people want to be co-responsible."

— Maria Wiering, OSV News

In second week, synod to discuss authority in the church

VATICAN CITY— Members of the Synod of Bishops have begun looking for ways to make relationships within the Catholic Church "more transparent and more harmonious, so that our witness may become more credible."

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, relator general of the synod, told members that that was their task as the second week of the monthlong assembly began Oct. 7.

Opening discussions about the second module of the synod's working document, the cardinal said it would be easy for the assembly to "remain on a general level and simply reiterate the importance of relationships for the development of people and communities."

But, he said, "the people of God are waiting for guidance and suggestions from us on how to make that vision concretely livable."

The question, the cardinal said, is: "What is the Holy Spirit inviting us to do to move from a pyramidal way of exercising authority to a synodal way?"

During the first week of synod proceedings, members discussed their understandings of the foundations of synodality in the church.

Cardinal Hollerich said that during the second week, members will "seek ways to make operative today the ecclesiological perspective outlined" by the Second Vatican Council.

The challenge, he said, will be to avoid the risk of falling "into an excess of abstraction on the one hand, and in an excess of pragmatism in the other."

The cardinal asked members not to be afraid "to draw an outline of concrete proposals that individual churches will then be called upon to adapt to different circumstances."

Offering a reflection on the morning's Gospel reading in which Jesus recounts the parable of the good Samaritan, Benedictine Mother Maria Ignazia Angelini, a spiritual adviser to the synod, said that the story "reveals that the commandment of God is understood through an instinctive 'seeing'" of the other and a call "to surrender to the relationship."

Today, when "fratricidal wars divert one's gaze from seeing, in a never-ending spiral which leaves humanity half-dead," the Gospel calls for a "relational transformation," she said.

"The Samaritan is the living symbol of relational transformation," she said, because he forms a sense of relationship that testifies "to God, not himself."

"We are called by the synodal way to see the other in weaving, complementary relationships, stemming from that moment in which we are both the Samaritan and the half-dead man," she said, "saved, pitied and called to be merciful."

— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Synod stresses global approach to role of women, doctrinal development

Synod stresses global approach to role of women, doctrinal development

VATICAN CITY — Controversy over women's ordination, even at the synod, detracts attention from the plight of women in the Catholic Church and society, said an Australian bishop, who is a member of the Synod of Bishops.

When Catholics in the global North are "obsessed" with the issue of women's ordination, "women who in many parts of the church and world are treated as second-class citizens are totally ignored," Bishop Anthony Randazzo of Broken Bay, Australia, said during a press briefing Oct. 4, the third day of the synod on synodality.

In a written report delivered to synod members Oct. 2, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote that his dicastery, assigned to study the question of women's roles in the church, "judges that there is still no room for a positive decision by the magisterium regarding the access of women to the diaconate, understood as a degree of the sacrament of holy orders."

While Bishop Randazzo said he sees no problem with the topic of women's ordination being discussed and studied at the synod, he said such attention should "absolutely not" come at the cost of the dignity of women in the church and in the world.

"Can we stop talking about women and listen to, and speak with, women?" he asked. "This is how the church is called to act."

According to a 2024 Pew Research Center poll, a majority of Catholics surveyed in several Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Colombia, believe the Catholic Church should allow women to become priests. In the United States, 64% of Catholics surveyed agreed and a majority of Catholics in Italy, France and Spain support women's ordination. Data is not readily available on the sentiment of Catholics in Asia, Africa and Oceania.

Sister Xiskya Lucia Valladares, a member of the Religious of the Purity of Mary, said that although synod members received the report from Cardinal Fernández, the topic of women's ordination continues to be raised in both in small groups and assembly-wide discussions since there is an environment of "complete freedom of expression" encouraged by the synod organizers.

Sheila Leocádia Pires, secretary of the synod's information committee, said that the role of women and the relationship between individual charisms and ordained ministries were themes throughout the day's conversations among synod members.

Asked about reconciling differing views within the church, particularly in regard to the reception of "Fiducia Supplicans" ("Supplicating Trust"), Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero of Rabat, Morocco, said that it would have been preferable if such a document had gone through a synodal process.

The Vatican declaration stated it is permissible to give an informal blessing to a gay or other unmarried couple, though the union itself cannot be blessed, and drew criticism from several bishops in Africa.

Cardinal López, president of the North African regional bishops' conference, said bishops were not consulted about its publication, "so it should not surprise us that there were reactions against some of its points, not all of them."

After the document's publication, Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Kinshasa, president of Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, released a letter saying most bishops' conferences in Africa would not offer blessings to same-sex couples, though each bishop remained free to do so in his diocese.

Yet Cardinal López said his region was not consulted in Africa's response to the document, despite being part of the continent.

"Learning synodality is not a simple thing," he said. "We are going to have to overcome many setbacks and many moments in which we will have to ask for forgiveness, just as the president of the African bishops asked forgiveness for making a statement without waiting for us make to one."

— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Synodality, an antidote to polarization, helps mission, cardinal says

Synodality, an antidote to polarization, helps mission, cardinal says

VATICAN CITY— At the end of a multiyear process of listening, praying, discussing and discerning, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, said he hopes the Synod of Bishops can give Catholics four practical suggestions for being a more "synodal" church.

"What four things? I can't tell you right now, but I sure wish we could give four pieces of guidance to the people of God across the world," the cardinal told Catholic News Service Oct. 4.

In a message to the people of his archdiocese, Cardinal Tobin said synodality -- which involves listening to one another and the Holy Spirit and helping every baptized person take responsibility for their role in the church -- "is not an end in itself; we're not pursuing synodality as the ultimate goal."

Instead, he said, synodality "is a way of carrying out the mission that has been entrusted to us, and is, without a doubt, the responsibility of every baptized person."

Asked why it is so important to the church now, Cardinal Tobin said that in the "marvelous mosaic of the North American church, I think synodality is absolutely necessary as an antidote to polarization and division."

For instance, he said, "it struck me a year or two ago that we as bishops in the United States, in our assemblies, have never been able to speak about any of the exhortations of Pope Francis" -- from "Evangelii Gaudium," or the "Joy of the Gospel," to "Fratelli Tutti" -- when discussing the plans and priorities of the church in the United States.

"It dawned on me that perhaps we lack that sense of synodality that unlocks those documents and shows us the way forward," he said. It is important "to listen to others, so that when we propose priorities, we're actually speaking because we've listened to the people."

Pope Francis set up study groups to delve into several of the topics thousands of people raised in the preparatory process for the synod -- topics like women's role in the church, the procedure for choosing bishops, designing seminary programs to help priests learn to collaborate, ministry to LGBTQ Catholics and relations between bishops and members of religious orders.

While members of the synod heard reports on the study groups' progress Oct. 2, those topics were not treated in-depth in the working document that will guide synod discussions through Oct. 27.

Cardinal Tobin said he did not think the topics were "off the table," but that the study groups were a way "to keep those themes alive" without letting any one of them "capture the whole imagination of the synod, because we are still trying to figure out what a synodal missionary church looks like."

— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Synod stresses global approach to role of women, doctrinal development

Synod stresses global approach to role of women, doctrinal development

"Can we stop talking about women and listen to, and speak with, women?" he asked. "This is how the church is called to act."

According to a 2024 Pew Research Center poll, a majority of Catholics surveyed in several Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Colombia, believe the Catholic Church should allow women to become priests. In the United States, 64% of Catholics surveyed agreed and a majority of Catholics in Italy, France and Spain support women's ordination. Data on is not readily available on the sentiment of Catholics in Asia, Africa and Oceania.

Yet Cardinal López said his region was not consulted in Africa's response to the document, despite being part of the continent.

— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

Diversity of perspectives can strengthen the church, synod members say

Diversity of perspectives can strengthen the church, synod members say

VATICAN CITY — Catholics cannot have a clear view of the biggest issues impacting the church if they do not listen to the perspectives of Catholics who come from different countries or cultures or have different life experiences than they do, said Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas.

"Perspective is not the enemy of the truth. It's the normal way of the church. That's why we have four Gospels," said Bishop Flores, one of nine people Pope Francis chose to serve as president delegates of the Synod of Bishops in 2023 and again this year.

At a news conference Oct. 3, Bishop Flores told reporters covering the synod on synodality that the global listening process that preceded last year's meeting in Rome and the first synod assembly itself were exercises in helping synod members learn to listen to different perspectives.

"The central reality is to be aware that the perspective approaches the same mystery, but from its own context," he said, and "it's important for the rest of the body to hear it, not because we have to kind of pay due to that, but because we don't see as clearly if we don't hear what the local perspective is."

"My diocese is very poor," he told reporters. "It's on the border between Texas and Mexico. It's largely bilingual. But there is a voice there of the people that has something to say about how the Lord Jesus shows himself."

Listening is a discipline, Bishop Flores said. "If it were easy for everyone to listen, we would all do it, but obviously we don't. And so, the synodal reality into the future is a disciplined, patient listening, a perspective that we all need to hear, if we are to get the full picture. But what is the picture? The picture is the face of Christ."

The work of the synod, he said, is to take all the perspectives that have been offered from listening sessions on a local, diocesan, national and continental level and combine them with what was heard from the synod members at the first assembly and try "to find a cohesive voice," one which is not that of any particular person or country, but the voice of the church.

"We are searching for the 'we,'" he said, and "it's a work in progress."

Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa, special secretary of the synod, said the goal of last year's assembly "was to allow all experiences to be heard and to be recognized as a rich blessing of diversity. I remember at the end, after a month, how many people were amazed by the experiences of the church that they would never have imagined."

The task now, he said, is to "identify convergences, divergences and possibilities."

As for the issue of recognizing and strengthening the role of women in the church, an issue that was mentioned repeatedly at every stage of the synod consultation and sessions at the Vatican, St. Joseph Sister Maria de los Dolores Palencia Gómez, another synod president delegate, said that "a path is being carved and is already bearing fruit," although the pace varies by culture and context.

"The gifts of women and their contributions to a synodal church are being recognized more and more," she said. "We are taking steps, but we have to take even bigger, faster steps, with greater intensity while also taking into account the contexts, respecting the cultures, dialoguing with those cultures and listening to the women themselves."

— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

No one has 'exclusive right' to God's voice, pope says at synod opening

No one has 'exclusive right' to God's voice, pope says at synod opening

VATICAN CITY — Members of the Synod of Bishops must engage in genuine dialogue with those holding differing views, avoid pushing personal agendas and remain open to changing their minds about what is best for the church, Pope Francis said.

"We must free ourselves from everything that prevents the charity of the Spirit from creating harmony in diversity in us and among us," he said in his homily at the synod's opening Mass. "Those who arrogantly claim to have the exclusive right to hear the voice of the Lord cannot hear it."

The pope was joined by the 368 members of the Synod of Bishops for the Mass in St. Peter's Square Oct. 2. The synod's 16 fraternal delegates -- representatives from other Christian communities, who are participating in the assembly without voting privileges -- were the first to process into the square, followed by laypeople and religious who make up the 96 non-bishop voting members of the synod, or just over a quarter of the assembly. The Vatican reported that 77 cardinals attended the Mass.

Pope Francis urged synod participants to be careful "not to see our contributions as points to defend at all costs or agendas to be imposed," but rather to see their personal contribution to the synod proceedings "as a gift to be shared, ready even to sacrifice our own point of view in order to give life to something new, all according to God's plan."

Otherwise, he warned, "we will end up locking ourselves into dialogues among the deaf, where participants seek to advance their own causes or agendas without listening to others and, above all, without listening to the voice of the Lord."

The 87-year-old pope presided over the Mass but remained seated throughout the liturgy. Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, relator general of the synod, was the main celebrant at the altar, joined by Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the synod, and Bishop Luis Marín de San Martín, undersecretary of the synod.

The day after Israeli troops crossed the border into Lebanon and Iran fired ballistic missiles at Israel -- seen as significant escalations of the conflict in the Middle East -- Pope Francis in his homily called on all people to observe a day of prayer and fasting for peace Oct. 7, marking one year since Hamas' attack on Israel that sparked the ongoing conflict.

The pope also announced he will lead the recitation of the rosary for peace at Rome's Basilica of St. Mary Major Oct. 6, and he invited synod members to join him.

"Brothers and sisters, we again take up this synodal journey with a gaze fixed on the world, because the Christian community is always at the service of humanity to announce to all the joy of the Gospel," he said. "It is needed above all in this dramatic hour of history when the winds of war and flames of violence continue to destroy entire peoples and nations."

Bishops process toward the altar in St. Peter's Square during Mass with Pope Francis for the opening of the Synod of Bishops on synodality at the Vatican Oct. 2, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)In his homily, Pope Francis said that the synod is not a "parliamentary assembly," but an effort to understand the history, dreams and hopes of "our brothers and sisters scattered around the world inspired by our same faith, moved by the same desire for holiness."

He called on synod members to receive the contributions of the people of God collected throughout the synodal process, which began in October 2021, "with respect and attention, in prayer and in the light of the Word of God" in order to "reach the destination the Lord desires for us."

"The more we realize that we are surrounded by friends who love, respect and appreciate us, friends who want to listen to what we have to say, the more we will feel free to express ourselves spontaneously and openly," the pope said.

Developing such an attitude, he said, is not just a "technique" for facilitating dialogue and group communication dynamics, but is central to the church's vocation as "a welcoming place of gathering."

Though he acknowledged the need to be "great" in spirit, heart and outlook "because the issues that we must deal with are great and delicate, and the situations are broad and universal," the pope also said that "the only way to be worthy of the task entrusted to us is to make ourselves small and to receive one another humbly."

"Let us walk together, let us listen to the Lord, let us be led by the blowing of the Spirit," he said.

— Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

More: Seven things to know about the second and final session of the Synod on Synodality

Pope defends decision to give women, laymen voting rights at synod

Pope defends decision to give women, laymen voting rights at synod

Pope Francis gives his blessing during the opening of the first working session of the Synod of Bishops in the Vatican's Paul VI Audience Hall Oct. 2, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis opened the second session of the Synod of Bishops defending his decision to give women and laymen votes at the assembly, saying it reflects the Second Vatican Council's teaching that a bishop exercises his ministry with and within the people of God.

"It is certainly not a matter of replacing one with the other, rallying to the cry: 'Now it is our turn!'" the pope said as the 368 synod members -- including what the Vatican described as 96 "non-bishops" -- began their work Oct. 2 in the Paul VI Audience Hall.

"We are being asked to work together symphonically, in a composition that unites all of us in the service of God's mercy, in accordance with the different ministries and charisms that the bishop is charged to acknowledge and promote," the pope told the members, seated at round tables with a mix of cardinals, bishops, priests, religious and lay men and women.

Pope Francis said he wanted to respond to a "storm of chattering" that had developed around his expansion of synod membership.

German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and a synod member appointed by the pope, has said, "the canonical status of this assembly is not clear" since so many of the members are not, in fact, bishops.

For decades, however, the men's Union of Superiors General has been asked to elect 10 of their members -- almost always priests, but occasionally a religious brother -- to be full members of the synod. The real novelty Pope Francis introduced last year was to appoint women among the members, including by asking the women's International Union of Superiors General to elect full members like their male counterparts had been doing. A total of 57 women were named members of the synod's 2024 session.

Pope Francis insisted the composition of the assembly "expresses a way of exercising the episcopal ministry consistent with the living tradition of the church and with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. Never can a bishop, or any other Christian, think of himself 'without others.'"

"The presence in the assembly of the Synod of Bishops of members who are not bishops does not diminish the 'episcopal' dimension of the assembly," he said. "Still less does it place any limitation on, or derogate from, the authority proper to individual bishops and the College of Bishops."

Instead, the pope said, it highlights that bishops are to exercise their authority in a church that recognizes that it lives and grows from relationships between and among its members.

Quoting the ancient hymn "Veni Sancte Spiritus," Pope Francis prayed that the assembly would be "guided by the Holy Spirit, who 'bends the stubborn heart and will, melts the frozen, warms the chill and guides the steps that go astray'" as it strives "to help bring about a truly synodal church, a church in mission, capable of setting out, making herself present in today's geographical and existential peripheries, and seeking to enter into a relationship with everyone in Jesus Christ, our brother and Lord."

Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the synod, told members that if lay people were involved only at the beginning of the process it would "give the illusion of taking part in a decision-making process that however remains concentrated in the hands of a few."

If that were true, he said, "those who claim that the synodal process, once it has passed to the stage of the discernment of the bishops, has extinguished every prophetic instance of the People of God would be right!"

— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

Full coverage from the Synod on Synodality

Bishop Michael Martin calls on all people to embrace the Synod on Synodality, the Church’s worldwide effort to prayerfully listen to the Holy Spirit and to one another. Read it here.

Pope warns against becoming a ‘sedentary’ church after synod’s close

Bishop Michael Martin calls on all people to embrace the Synod on Synodality, the Church’s worldwide effort to prayerfully listen to the Holy Spirit and to one another. Read it here.

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More: Seven things to know about the second and final session of the Synod on Synodality

Pope defends decision to give women, laymen voting rights at synod