By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Around the world, listening sessions for the Synod of Bishops gave many participants a sense of finally being listened to, but they also raised questions about how to promote greater inclusion in the Catholic Church while staying true to church teaching.

Two of the issues raised most often in reports sent to the Vatican were the need to respect and value the contributions women make to the church and the need to face “the impact of a lack of trust and credibility resulting from the abuse crisis,” according to the working document for the synod’s continental stage.

Titled “Enlarge the Space of Your Tent” – the Lord’s command to the people of Israel in the Book of Isaiah – the document said, “This is how many reports envision the church: an expansive, but not homogeneous dwelling, capable of sheltering all, but open, letting in and out, and moving toward embracing the Father and all of humanity.”

The document released Oct. 27 is the result of a group reflection on the syntheses of synod discussions submitted by 112 of the world’s 114 bishops’ conference, all 15 Eastern churches, 17 of the 23 dicasteries of the Roman Curia, the men’s and women’s international unions of superiors general, dozens of Catholic associations and more than 1,000 individuals, it said.

The general secretariat of the synod chose an international group of laity, religious, priests and bishops to read the submissions, pray about them and then draft a document that would help participants in the next phase reflect on the faith, hopes and concerns witnessed to in the reports. The document was approved by the cardinals and bishops belonging to the synod’s general council.

What emerged from the reports, it said, “is a profound re-appropriation of the common dignity of all the baptized. This is the authentic pillar of a synodal church and the theological foundation of a unity which is capable of resisting the push toward homogenization. This enables us to continue to promote and make good use of the variety of charisms that the Spirit with unpredictable abundance pours out on the faithful.”

Those who most often feel unwelcome in the church or undervalued, it said, include: women, young people, people with disabilities, the poor, those who are divorced and civilly remarried, single parents, those in polygamous marriages and members of the LGBTQ communities.

Responding to experiences of exclusion and discrimination shared by Catholic with disabilities, the document said that “in spite of its own teachings, the church is in danger of imitating the way society casts them aside.”

Reflecting the central place of the Eucharist in the life of the church, it said most submissions included a call for greater participation by all Catholics in the liturgy, working to ensure that it is less “concentrated on the celebrant,” involves more young people and women, including in preaching, and is more reflective of local cultures.

At the same time, the document also noted that in several reports, including that from the United States, some participants in the local listening sessions “lamented” Pope Francis’ decision to limit celebrations of the Latin-rite Mass according to the rite used before the Second Vatican Council.

“The quality of homilies is almost unanimously reported as a problem,” it said.

But the document also highlighted a common desire to find solutions to various forms of “sacramental deprivation,” including for people in remote towns and villages without a priest, as well as for civilly remarried Catholics and those in polygamous marriages.

While the reports were not “against priests or the ministerial priesthood,” the document said, many of them cited “clericalism” as an obstacle to being a “synodal church,” one where all the baptized share responsibility for the life of the community and for its mission of spreading the Gospel.

“Clericalism is seen as a form of spiritual impoverishment, a deprivation of the true goods of ordained ministry, and a culture that isolates clergy and harms the laity,” it said. Clericalism produces “rigidity, attachment to legalistic power and an exercise of authority that is power rather than service.”

In synod listening sessions around the world, participants noted that women are the majority of Catholics regularly attending the liturgy and staffing most paid and volunteer parish activities, yet it is mostly men who make the decisions in the church.

“Many reports ask that the church continue its discernment in relation to a range of specific questions: the active role of women in the governing structures of church bodies, the possibility for women with adequate training to preach in parish settings, and a female diaconate,” the document said. “Much greater diversity of opinion was expressed on the subject of priestly ordination for women, which some reports call for, while others consider a closed issue.”

Between January and March, smaller groups of church representatives are to meet on a continental or regional level; organized by bishops’ conferences, the groups are to include bishops, priests, religious and laypeople to read the document, pray about it and discuss which issues raised it in are most important and urgent for Catholics in their region to address in order to increase participation, a sense of communion and a commitment to missionary outreach.

By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Nativity scene that will sit under a 98-feet-tall silver fir tree in the middle of St. Peter’s Square this year will feature 19 life-sized figures carved in cedar by artisans in the northeastern Italian town of Sutrio.

The tree comes from Rosello, a village of only 182 residents, in Italy’s central Abruzzo region, said a news release issued Oct. 28 by the office governing Vatican City State. The decorations on the tree are being made by young adults at a residential psychiatric facility in Rosello.

The tree will be lighted, and the traditional Nativity scene unveiled Dec. 3, the office said. The display will remain up until after the feast of the Baptism of the Lord Jan. 8.
The cedar for the Nativity scene figures, the Vatican said, came from trees selectively cut by gardeners to improve the health of other trees in several public and private gardens. None of the trees were cut specifically for the sculptures.
The Holy Family, the ox and donkey and an angel will be under an arched structure made of larch. The other figures – including the Three Kings, the shepherdess, a carpenter, a family and a “Cramar,” or local wandering salesman – will be on the surrounding platform or ramps leading to it.

The day before the office announced the plans for St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican’s Philatelic Office published a notice about the Vatican’s 2022 Christmas stamps, which were painted by Italian artist and activist Francesco Canale, who was born without arms or legs and paints holding a brush between his teeth.

He painted two stamps – one of an angel announcing the birth of Jesus to a shepherd and one of a shepherd adoring the baby Jesus.

By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – With a renewed membership, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors met at the Vatican in late October and laid the groundwork for devising an annual report on child protection efforts by the Catholic Church globally.

Oblate Father Andrew Small, commission secretary, told reporters Oct. 28 that members also looked at the commission’s new relationship to the disciplinary section of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and continued their efforts to promote greater transparency and fuller reporting to victims about the outcome of their cases.

“In our engagement with victim survivors, the acknowledgement of the wrong that was done to them is primary, being listened to, being believed,” Father Small said. “There’s nothing that takes the place of being believed and heard.”

But, he said, “seeing the wrongdoer continue to flourish at times or to appear without sanction is also very painful,” so victims are understandably confused or upset when they are not informed about actions taken by the church against an accused offender.

Because the commission is not involved in individual investigations and disciplinary procedures, Father Small said he could not comment on the case of Bishop Michel Santier of Créteil, France. When the Vatican announced in 2021 that the bishop was retiring, the bishop had said it was for health reasons. No one contradicted him publicly until mid-October when the Diocese of Créteil confirmed he had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct and disciplined by the Vatican.

The Vatican still needs to find a way to be more open while respecting local laws that protect the reputation of someone who is not guilty of a civil crime but may have violated church law, Father Small said.
If the church cannot figure that out, he said, not only will it be bad for the institutional church, “but it will be continually painful for the victims, who are the source and summit of the commission’s focus.”

When Pope Francis reorganized the Roman Curia, he linked the commission to the disciplinary section of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Father Small, writing in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said the move ensures the commission “would maintain its independence as an advisory body to the pope, with access to the bodies that exercise leadership within the church and with the mandate to oversee the adequacy of the church’s policies and procedures in the area of abuse prevention and safeguarding.”

So, Father Small wrote, the commission “will continue to be led by a president delegate, appointed by the pope and reporting directly to the pontiff. And decisions regarding the personnel, the members of the commission, as well as the proposals it produces, will remain independent of the dicastery. Pope Francis has been very clear that the independent voices of the members of the commission and those it serves should not be compromised.”

U.S. Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston has been president of the commission since its establishment in 2014.

During the commission’s meeting Oct. 27-29, it also announced the launch of a fund to help finance the establishment of “suitable centers where individuals who have experienced abuse, and their family members, can find acceptance and an attentive hearing, and be accompanied in a process of healing and justice, as indicated in the motu proprio ‘Vos Estis Lux Mundi.’”

Father Small told reporters that he believed 70 to 80 of the 114 bishops’ conferences in the world do not have stable, publicly accessible reporting mechanisms called for in Vos Estis, mainly because they do not have the resources. But with major funding from the Italian bishops’ conference and contributions from others, those listening and reporting posts will be established.

As for the annual report on the church’s child protection efforts worldwide, a report the pope asked the commission in April to develop, Father Small said commission members outlined a design for the report.
The first section, he said, would summarize reports bishops give to the commission while making their “ad limina” visits to the Vatican regarding their guidelines and implementation of Vos Estis.

For the second section, commission members will divide into teams to look at the church in specific geographical areas, focusing on giving a broader overview of child protection efforts in Africa, in Asia and Oceania, in Europe and in the Americas.

A third section will look at how dicasteries of the Roman Curia are including safeguarding in their activities; for example, how the Dicastery for Clergy promotes safeguarding awareness in seminaries, he said.

The final section will look at broader church efforts to protect children in the world by, for example, rescuing child soldiers, protecting migrant and refugee children, ensuring their safety in orphanages and foster care homes.

While Father Small said the commission should have something to give the pope in 2023, he does not expect to collect enough “actionable data” to begin doing a full annual report until 2024.

By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY – Growth toward becoming a “synodal church,” one in which all the baptized accept and share responsibility for their unity and mission, can get messy, and that should not frighten people, said one of the undersecretaries of the Synod of Bishops.

“What we see with the synod is that the church is learning to face, to name and to be with the tensions, the polarities, the diversity” found among Catholics within parishes and across the globe, “and not just sweep them under the carpet,” said Xavière Missionary Sister Nathalie Becquart.

The process for the Synod of Bishops, like the sessions of the Second Vatican Council, is marked by theological, cultural and practical differences, she said, but she is confident that by listening to the Holy Spirit, listening to each other and being patient, consensus will prevail as it did at Vatican II.

Sister Becquart spoke to Catholic News Service Oct. 14, just before she and the synod’s top leadership had a private meeting with Pope Francis.

The meeting came three days after the pope celebrated a Mass marking the 60th anniversary of the opening of the council and pleaded with Catholics to resist the temptations of division, “quarrels, gossip and disputes.”

Synodality is the way forward, Sister Becquart said, pointing to Pope Francis’ explanation in the book “Let Us Dream”:

“We need a respectful, mutual listening, free of ideology and predetermined agendas. The aim is not to reach agreement by means of a contest between opposing positions, but to journey together to seek God’s will, allowing differences to harmonize. Most important of all is the synodal spirit: to meet each other with respect and trust, to believe in our shared unity and to receive the new thing that the Spirit wishes to reveal to us.”

Before the end of October, the synod office will release its “Document for the Continental Phase” of the synod, echoing the themes that emerged from all the national syntheses of synod listening sessions and the contributions of religious orders, Catholic movements, Vatican dicasteries and nuncios from around the world.

“It’s a working document,” Sister Becquart said. People who participated in the listening sessions will be asked to read it, pray about it and share their reactions with their national synod coordinators. Then bishops, priests, religious and laity representing the church in their country will meet with representatives from other countries in their region to discuss what “resonates” with them or what they believe is missing.
The idea, she said, is that the synod is not just a one-way process from the grassroots up to the “top.” Rather, the process is “circular,” because a key part of “synodal ecclesiology that comes from Vatican II” sees an “intrinsic link between the local churches and the universal churches” and aims to deepen that relationship.

In the document for the continental phase, the synod office is returning results to the local level, checking that they were heard and asking them to broaden their reflection with people in neighboring countries.
The Synod of Bishops and, especially, the vision of “synodality” is one of “the fruits of Vatican II,” she said, but they are also paths that can help the church and its members receive and experience some of the key insights of the council.

Sister Becquart pointed particularly to how, with all the Catholic bishops of the entire world gathered in Rome in four sessions from 1962 to 1965, the council was the most concrete experience ever of the church being universal. And its focus on the church as “the people of God” rather than primarily as an institution and its emphasis on the dignity and responsibility of all the baptized are being rediscovered in the synod process, she said.

And, she said, while the 16 documents approved by the council are essential reading, people should not forget that for the participants, the Second Vatican Council was “a human, spiritual and ecclesial experience.” The national reports indicate something similar was happening to many of the people participating in the local listening sessions, she said.

As the process continues, bumps in the road are expected, she said, because “it’s a new way to relate to each other, a new kind of communication and relationship dynamic in the church,” particularly between bishops and laity.

“It is, as we say, a work in progress.”

By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY – Saying he did not want to rush the process of discerning how the Holy Spirit is calling the church to grow in “synodality,” Pope Francis announced that the next assembly of the Synod of Bishops would take place in two sessions.

The synod assembly, with mostly bishops as voting members, will meet Oct. 4-29, 2023, as previously announced, the pope said, but the assembly will have a second session in October 2024 as well.

Pope Francis made the announcement Oct. 16 at the end of his Angelus address. He had met Oct. 14 with the synod leadership.

The pope and local bishops kicked off the listening and discernment process for the “synod on synodality” in October 2021, and by November the synod secretariat is expected to release a working document for continental assemblies.

With 112 of the 114 bishops’ conference in the world having sent in a synthesis of what emerged in the listening sessions in their countries, Pope Francis said that “the fruits of the synodal process underway are many, but so that they might come to full maturity, it is necessary not to be in a rush.”

“To have a more relaxed period of discernment,” the pope announced, “I have established that this synodal assembly will take place in two sessions” rather than the one originally planned.

“I trust that this decision will promote the understanding of synodality as a constitutive dimension of the church and help everyone to live it as the journey of brothers and sisters who proclaim the joy of the Gospel,” Pope Francis told thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Sunday Angelus prayer.

The website of the synod secretariat describes synodality as a style seen in the church’s life and mission that reflects its nature as “the people of God journeying together and gathering in assembly, summoned by the Lord Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Gospel.”

While it does not imply everyone has a vote on issues facing the church, it does mean that all the members of the church – ordained or lay – have a responsibility to contribute to the church’s mission and to pray, offer suggestions and join in discerning the voice of the Holy Spirit.

A statement from the synod secretariat Oct. 16 said Pope Francis’ decision to add a second assembly “stems from the desire that the theme of a ‘synodal church,’ because of its breadth and importance, might be the subject of prolonged discernment not only by the members of the synodal assembly, but by the whole church.”

Although it did not feature the same widespread, grassroots listening sessions, the deliberations of the Synod of Bishops on challenges and joys facing families also met in two sessions. First, Pope Francis convoked in 2014 an “extraordinary general assembly” on “the pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization.” Then, using the 2014 gathering’s final report as an outline, the ordinary general assembly of the Synod of Bishops met in 2015 to look at “the vocation and mission of the family in the church and contemporary world.”

Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, then secretary-general of the synod, wrote to bishops’ conferences at the time explaining that, “the two synodal assemblies, sharing the same topic of the family, become part of a single synodal process, which includes not only the two celebrative phases but also the intervening time between synods, a time to reflect on the reaction to the first synod and to make a thorough theological examination of the church’s pastoral activity in light of the succeeding one.”

By Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis personally expressed his thanks to the four dozen people who read through hundreds of reports about the listening phase of the Synod of Bishops and, after 12 days of prayer, reflection and discussion, drafted a working document for the continental stage of the synod process.
The pope welcomed the cardinals, bishops, priests, religious and lay participants to the Vatican Oct. 2, the last day of their work.

At the heart of the work were the 112 syntheses submitted by national bishops’ conferences from around the world, as well as syntheses from the Eastern Catholic churches, religious orders, church organizations and movements, offices of the Roman Curia and individuals. Each of the 25 people appointed to the drafting committee read a dozen reports before joining the others in Frascati, outside of Rome, Sept. 21.

“We come to you at the end of a unique and extraordinary ecclesial experience that has made us aware of the richness of the fruits that the Spirit is awakening in the holy people of God,” Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, told Pope Francis, according to the synod office.

“We truly feel a sense of awe at the wonders God is working in his church,” the cardinal said. And, returning home, members of the drafting group “will be able to say that the church offers itself as a home for all, because the experience of synodality that we are living leads us to ‘widen the space of the tent’ to truly welcome everyone.”

Neither the Vatican press office nor the synod office said whether the pope made any remarks to the group.

Prior to writing the first draft, participants met in a succession of small groups ordered, for example, by geographic region or ecclesial status. They even spent time in all-male or all-female working groups, identifying key themes in the national reports, praying about voices that seemed to be missing and noticing tensions or suggestions.

After reading, discussing and correcting the draft, they were joined by the bishops who are members of the Ordinary Council of the Synod of Bishops. The council approved the document, which will be published in late October, according to the synod general secretariat.

The document will be the subject of prayer and discussion at continental assemblies, which are scheduled to be held between January and March 2023.

According to the synod office, “The intent of the continental stage is to deepen our discernment on what has emerged from the previous stage of local and national listening, with the aim of formulating open questions more accurately and to better substantiate and flesh out the insights coming from the local churches.”

Although they are being called “continental assemblies,” the gatherings are more aligned with regional bishops’ conferences. Six assemblies – which are to include bishops, priests, religious and laypeople – are planned: Europe; Latin America and the Caribbean; Africa and Madagascar; Asia; Canada and the United States; and the Middle East, including the Eastern Catholic churches.