On October 9 and 10, Pope Francis will begin, in Rome, the preparatory stage of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. A week later, on October 17, all the dioceses of the world will inaugurate the consultation and preparation phase, at the local level, of this synod of the Church, which will culminate with the meeting, in Rome in October 2023, of the participants at the actual synod gathering, who will approve a final document. The theme proposed for this very important ecclesial event is For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission. In other words, the issue on which we are invited to reflect is precisely synodality, the way of being, of operating and of moving forward of the Church as an authentic community of brothers and sisters, where all voices are heard, where no one is left lagging behind, where we all feel like companions on the road, advancing at once (which is exactly what the etymology of the word synod means, made up of the Greek prefix sin —reunion, joint action— and the noun odos —way, path). To practice synodality is to walk together.
Francis proposes that the Church, taking up the teachings of the Second Vatican Council (which stressed that the ecclesial community is, above all, a family, the People of God, where everyone counts and everyone has a mission), may assume its communal identity and renew her commitment to be, more and more, an articulated body that advances without discarding or marginalizing anyone, a body in which everyone, from the bishops to the most recent baptized believers, feel and are true companions on the journey.
This commitment, and this synod, are necessary. Because, despite the extraordinary advances made since the Council, when we look at our parishes, communities and ecclesial movements, we realize that we still have a lot of work to do. In how many parishes must everything still go through the pastor (from the most vital to the most trivial decisions), who reigns over his parishioners with a style more typical of a feudal lord than a shepherd? In how many religious congregations and dioceses is authority still exercised without the slightest dialogue between those who ordain and those who obey? In how many movements and institutions that call themselves Christian are the leaders and founders treated with an unhealthy cult of their personalities, which stifles any constructive criticism of their leadership before it can even be formulated? How many groups —starting, of course, with women, who, if I am not mistaken, make up half of humanity— still participate in the life of the Church in a peripheral and marginal way, without access to many areas, roles or functions?
We repeat beautiful sentences from the Council that emphasize the participation of all the baptized in the life of the Church, but in practice we are still a strongly hierarchical, often authoritarian structure, in which consensus matters little and in which some voices have a disproportionate weight, to the detriment of others.
In this sense, the next synod is a reason for hope. Let us pray, from now on, for its success. So that the Spirit, who, like the wind, «blows wherever it pleases» (Jn 3: 8) guide us along paths of authentic conversion in favor of synodality, this desire (so close to the heart of the Gospel) to leave no one behind, to listen to all voices and to count on everyone, especially on those that our society—and also the Church—tends to ignore and marginalize.
