Dear Friends,
The Synod on Synodality begins this week in Rome. Compared to past synods there is a lot of information about this one in the media. It has generated some controversy even before it meets because Pope Francis asked all of us in the Church to be involved. We were all invited to pray over and respond to preliminary questions about the Church and to send those into our local dioceses who in turn sent them to the USCCB who sent them to Rome. That listening process generated a few issues to be discussed by the Synod that will not be easy to resolve given either what scripture teaches or the long tradition of the Church. Pope Francis wants that prayerful listening posture to continue in the Synod itself, so prayer and quiet are built into the daily schedule for the Synod.
Here is how the Synod will begin: things kick off Saturday morning (September 30) at 10:00 a.m. Rome time, when Pope Francis will preside over a consistory ceremony to create 21 new cardinals. That is followed by a day full of optional prayer-activities and concludes with an ecumenical vigil in St. Peter’s Square at 6:00 p.m. local time to pray for the success of the Synod. The roster of other Christian leaders expected to be on hand includes Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the traditional “first among equals” in the Orthodox world, as well as Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Following the prayer service, the Synod participants will move from St. Peter’s Square into the nearby Paul VI Audience Hall, where a dinner will be offered by the Italian bishops’ conference. Afterwards, the roughly 400 participants will board a fleet of buses which will transport them from Rome to Sacrofano, a small town roughly an hour to the north, where they will be lodged at the Fraterna Domus retreat center for a set of spiritual exercises prior to the opening of the Synod.
The retreat will be led by British Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe, a former master general of the Dominican order, and Benedictine Mother Maria Ignazia Angelini, former abbess of the storied Benedictine convent of Viboldone in Milan and among Italy’s leading experts on monastic life. Plans call for Radcliffe and Angelini to deliver meditations to the whole group in the mornings, with the afternoons scheduled for meetings in small groups. Every evening, the group will attend Mass together prior to dinner.
The evening of October 3, participants will be bused back to Rome in order to be in place the next morning, which is the Feast of St. Francis, for the Mass to open the Synod. The Mass will be concelebrated by all the new cardinals. October 4 is also the scheduled release of a new apostolic exhortation on the environment from Pope Francis, designed as a follow-up to his 2015 encyclical Laudato si’.
On the afternoon of October 4, the actual work of the Synod will begin with an opening plenary assembly. Meetings of the Synod, alternating between sessions of the entire body and small working groups organized by language, will proceed until October 29. Pope Francis has asked that media not be present during the sessions so that participants feel free to speak what is in their heart without fear of what the world may think. I would imagine, that just like during Vatican II, we will hear leaks coming from the Synod and will be given some sense of the direction where the Holy Spirit is leading us in the Synod.
Please keep all the participants in your prayers during the month of October.
Peace,
Fr. Damian