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

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — 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.

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