“An ‘open door’ of the community is needed, allowing people to enter without feeling threatened or judged.”
When asked at the press conference whether the proposal of a new ministry of listening and accompaniment might be a step toward more “bureaucratization” of the Church, Grech underlined that the purpose of the ministry would be to “educate the community” to make progress in its service of listening and accompaniment.
The secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops added that all Catholics are invited to proclaim the Word and to be catechists, but this does not make the existence of ministries of readers and catechists within the Church a “bureaucratization.”
Grech also announced that the Secretariat of the Synod will soon publish a “theological aid” to supplement the Instrumental Laboris, which will provide theological and canonical analyses on the Instrumentum Laboris to help the synod participants to “recognize and understand the roots and implications of what is contained therein.”
‘Maturation in the synodal journey’
During the press conference, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, SJ, the relator general of the Synod on Synodality, said the reports submitted to synod organizers by bishops’ conferences around the world show that the multiyear synod process “has been and still is a time of grace that is already bearing numerous fruits in the life of the Church.”
“From Kenya to Ireland, from Korea to Brazil, reports underline this renewed dynamism that listening offered and received is bringing to communities,” he said.
Hollerich pointed to how he has observed a difference between the reports the General Secretariat received from bishops’ conferences at the beginning of the Synod on Synodality to the reports submitted this year by 108 bishops’ conferences.
“If the first ones emphasized more the resistance and opposition to the synodal process; these reports emphasize more the weariness and fatigue of a path of conversion that is not immediate,” he said.
The cardinal added that he views this as evidence of “a maturation in the synodal journey,” noting that many bishops’ conferences identified fruits from their local synod experience.
The Oct. 2–27 gathering of the Synod on Synodality will mark the end of the discernment phase of the Church’s synodal process, which Pope Francis opened in 2021.
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Participants in the fall meeting, including Catholic bishops, priests, religious, and laypeople from around the world, will prepare and vote on the Synod on Synodality’s advisory final document, which will then be given to the pope, who decides the Church’s next steps and if he wishes to adopt the text as a papal document or to write his own.
The third phase of the synod — after “the consultation of the people of God” and “the discernment of the pastors” — will be “implementation,” according to organizers.
“The synod is already changing our way of being and living the Church regardless of the October assembly,” Hollerich said.
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