Pope opens big Vatican meeting on church's future
Pope Francis said the Catholic Church needed to be rebuilt to make it a place of welcome for “everyone, everyone, everyone,” as he opened a divisive meeting on the future of the church that has sparked hope among progressives and alarm among conservatives.
Francis presided over a solemn Mass in St. Peter's Square to formally open the meeting. But he warned both camps in the church's culture wars to put their “human strategies, political calculations or ideological battles” aside and let the Holy Spirit guide debate.
“We're not here to create a parliament, but to walk together with the gaze of Jesus,” he said.
Rarely in recent times has a Vatican gathering generated as much hope, hype and fear as this threeweek, closed-door meeting, known as a synod. It won't make any binding decisions and is only the first session
of a two-year process. But it nevertheless has drawn an acute battle line in the church's perennial leftright divide and marks a defining moment for Francis and his reform agenda.
On the table are calls to
take concrete steps to elevate more women to decision-making roles in the church, including as deacons, and for ordinary Catholic faithful to have more of a say in church governance.
Also under consideration are ways to better welcome of LGBTQ+ Catholics and others who have been marginalized by the church, and for new accountability measures to check how bishops exercise their authority to prevent abuses.
Even before it started, the gathering was historic because Francis decided to let women and laypeople vote alongside bishops in any final document produced. While fewer than a quarter of the 365 voting members are non-bishops, the reform is a radical shift away from a hierarchy-focused Synod of Bishops and evidence of Francis' belief that the church is more about its flock than its shepherds.
The opening Mass and seating arrangements made that clear: The lay participants led off the processional into St. Peter's Square, followed by the vested clerics, suggesting their primacy of place. Inside the synod auditorium, laypeople sat at round tables alongside cardinals and bishops, rather than in the upper back row of the Vatican's audience hall as in previous synods.
“It's a watershed moment,” said JoAnn Lopez, an Indian-born lay minister who helped organize two years of consultations prior to the meeting at parishes where she has worked in Seattle and Toronto.
“This is the first time that women have a very qualitatively different voice at the table, and the opportunity to vote in decisionmaking is huge,” she said.
In his homily, Francis recalled that his namesake St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is celebrated Wednesday, also faced divisions and tensions in his lifetime and responded with prayer, charity, humility and unity when he was told: “Go and rebuild my church.”
“Let us do the same!” Francis said. “And if God's holy people with their shepherds from all over the world have expectations, hopes and even some fears about the synod we are beginning, let us continue to remember that it is not a political gathering, but a convocation in the spirit; not a polarized parliament, but a place of grace and communion.”