Members of the Synod of Bishops must ask, listen to and prayerfully reflect on difficult questions, not dismiss or avoid them, the spiritual adviser to the synod on synodality told them.

While the Catholic Church’s Synod of Bishops is not exactly like a synod in other Christian communities, the issues being discussed and the way they are being handled are relevant to other Christian churches and to the search for Christian unity, synod participants said.

A bishop who runs his diocese like a “monarch” is not only not acting synodally, but he probably is lonely and stressed, said theologians advising the Synod of Bishops.

More than two dozen popes have celebrated Mass under the giant canopy that rises over the main altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, but the impressive view from the top of 100-foot-tall bronze structure has been reserved for a select few: cleaners, contractors and restoration experts.

As the Holy Land marked a grim first anniversary Oct. 7 of the Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities and subsequent Israel-Hamas war that has devastated the Gaza Strip, the papal almoner raised $35,000 in one afternoon from delegates to the Synod on Synodality and immediately sent it to Holy Family Parish in Gaza 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.

Most people claim they want unity, but usually they mean they want others to unite around their own point of view, which gives rise to conflict, Pope Francis said.

God works in mysterious ways, but the Holy Father is even more mysterious, Cardinal-designate Mykola Bychok, eparch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Australia and Oceania, told The Catholic Weekly on the day of his appointment.

Almost half of the 21 cardinals-to-be Pope Francis recently announced were already in Rome attending the Synod of Bishops on synodality, but that didn’t necessarily mean they all heard the news when it happened.

With one current member of the College of Cardinals — Venezuelan Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo of Caracas — about to celebrate his 80th birthday, when the new cardinals are inducted into the college in December, there could be as many as 141 “cardinal electors.”