CNA Newsroom, Mar 15, 2025 / 10:15 am (CNA).
The Vatican announced Tuesday that Pope Francis has approved a special Ecclesial Assembly for October 2028 to evaluate how Catholic communities worldwide have implemented the recently concluded Synod on Synodality recommendations.
Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod, detailed the plans in a letter to bishops worldwide, emphasizing that this gathering will not constitute a new Synod but rather serve as the culmination of a structured three-year implementation process.
“The goal is not to add work upon work but to help Churches walk in a synodal style,” Cardinal Grech wrote.
The cardinal further said that local churches would actively receive and apply the synod’s final document, which Pope Francis directly approved following the conclusion of the Synod in October 2024.
The new implementation timeline begins in May 2025 with the publication of detailed guidelines, followed by a “Jubilee of Synodal Teams” in October.
Throughout 2027, evaluation assemblies will take place at diocesan, national, and international levels, with continental gatherings scheduled for early 2028.
Cardinal Grech highlighted the essential role of local “synodal teams” composed of “priests, deacons, consecrated men and women, and laypeople” working alongside their bishops. These teams, he noted, should be “valued” and, where necessary, “renewed, reactivated, and appropriately integrated.”
“This process does not diminish the role of each Church in receiving and applying the fruits of the synod in its own unique way,” the cardinal wrote. “Rather, it encourages a great co-responsibility that values local Churches while associating the episcopal college with the pope’s ministry.”
Cardinal Grech concluded his letter with an invitation for prayers for Pope Francis, who has been hospitalized at Rome’s Gemelli Clinic since Feb. 14.
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What? More?
Too much of an echo chamber for the illuminati? Three comments and a question:
FIRST, the synodal style, by itself, is something for the next conclave to think about, twice. In 2028 Cardinal Grech might even be awarded two minutes to say his piece. One key innovation, here, is “consensus,” and we ask, “consensus about what”? A second devolution is the meaning of the word “alongside.” As successors of the Apostles (apostello: “sent”), the ordained bishops are firstly the guardians of the Deposit of Faith, which is our institutional, charismatic, sacramental, and personal incorporation into the life of Jesus Christ (the Mystical Body of Christ).
SECOND, yes, to some credible process to get the ordained clergy and the laity to support and leaven each other within the “universal call to holiness.” But, what still of Vatican II—which Grech mentions—which retains clarity about the vital “difference in kind as well as degree” (Lumen Gentium). Also a distinction between the realm of Revelation (Dei Verbum) and the realm of the world (Gaudium et Spes).
THIRD, so, in the full text of this initiative (https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2025-03/grech-a-new-path-to-help-the-church-walk-in-a-synodal-style.html), why are the terms “Synod” (of Bishops) and “Assembly” used interchangeably? In a deeper way, the presence of the entire Communion of Saints (!) already happens at each celebration of the Mass—as an “extension and continuation” (St. John Paul II, drawing from St. John Chrysostom) of the one event of Calvary. The center of universal human history; not simply an episode within one narrative among many.
So, yes, to reinvigorating a religious and therefore fully human alternative to a post-World War II, post-modern, and flat-earth world moving backward into global spheres of influence. But, alone, the synodal “style” does not replace content. This by procedurally substituting (?) the vertical altar with horizontal roundtables of various sizes.
QUESTION: What does the synodal “style” have to offer to what is, in fact, a new Apostolic Age?