Synod, October 4: leading African cardinal criticized for inadequate consultation in rejecting same-sex blessings

October 05, 2024

On October 4—the third day of the second and final session of the synod on synodality—351 out of the 365 participants gathered in Paul VI Audience Hall to discuss “Foundations,” a section of the session’s instrumentum laboris, or working document (synod agenda).

“Foundations” is found on pp. 1-10 of the instrumentum laboris. The discussion of “Foundations”—the first of five synod “modules”—began on October 3 and concludes on October 5.

Second general congregation

L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, reported that the second general congregation began with songs and with the reading of a selection from Luke 10 by Vanessa Cheng Siu-wai, a lay synod member from the Focolare movement in Hong Kong.

Pope Francis then prayed and blessed the participants. Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, wished a happy name day to Pope Francis and all named after St. Francis of Assisi, whose memorial is celebrated on October 4. Participants applauded.

The General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, led by Cardinal Grech, has imposed tight secrecy on synod participants (Regulations, Article 24), binding them to confidentiality, even with respect to their own contributions, and even after the session concludes. The regulations stand in marked contrast to the relative transparency of the Synod of Bishops under St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, during which the Vatican routinely published the Synod fathers’ interventions (speeches).

Consistent with this opacity, L’Osservatore Romano summarized the discussions in one sentence: “The presentation of the reports of the linguistic tables, the voting on the Agenda for discussion, and the alternation of free interventions took place according to the established agenda.”

Press conference

At the October 4 press conference (video), speakers offered more details, allowing for an impressionistic sense of the day’s proceedings. Vatican News, the news agency of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, reported that the following topics were discussed in the five papers that summarized the deliberations of the working groups into which synod participants were divided:

• “the image of the Church as the Body of Christ, where there are many ministries and charisms in a single body”
• “the role of the laity, and in particular of women, in the Church ... The presenters emphasized that all charisms are important, but that it is not necessary for all charisms to be expressed in ecclesial ministries.”
• “the possibility of deeper study of the possibility of ministries such as a ministry of consolation”
• the “equal dignity and co-responsibility of all those who are baptized” (this was “strongly emphasized”)
• the infrequent mention of the laity and the family from the synod’s working document
• the relationship between local dioceses and culture
• the complex language of the working document
• the “Eurocentric and Western perspective” of the working document
• the need to start from reality, particularly the realities of the poor, rather than theory

In the papers, some synod participants expressed their belief that fear of women, ignorance of women, and contempt for women are at the root of “certain positions”—presumably on women’s ordination. Vatican News reported:

In the context of the relationships between men and women, some Groups suggested the need to identify fears and fears [sic] behind certain positions, “because these fears in the Church have led to attitudes of ignorance and contempt toward women.” Identification of such fears can further the work of ecclesial discernment.

Following the presentation of the papers, 36 speakers took to the floor to address the synod. These speakers, according to press conference presenters, discussed

• the role of women
• the role of the laity
• “developing a synodal spirituality”
• “more dialogue with other cultures, philosophies, and religions”
• the “poverty and suffering” of “those who feel excluded from society and the Church, such as the divorced, the marginalized, and the so-called LGBTQ+ community”
• “the repeated and celebrated theme of the liturgy, which can become a mirror of synodality”

Bishop Randazzo and Cardinal López

At the press conference, Bishop Antony Randazzo of Broken Bay, Australia, the president of the Federation of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania, said that “a small minority, with a large powerful Western voice, are obsessed with pushing” the issue of women’s ordination to the diaconate.

“I have no problems with this issue being talked about and studied,” he said, but such “niche” issues draw attention away from other issues, such as women’s marginalization, domestic violence, and the lack of listening to women. He also lamented the inclusion of Western corporate culture into Church life:

I hear the Church using business models. That’s niche, and it will be the death of us as a community because we are trying to become so sophisticated in our administration that we are becoming so narrow, that we are in fact excluding people from participatory models of a synodal Church in mission.

Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, SDB, also spoke at the press conference.

López, a Salesian, was ordained to the priesthood in 1979 and ministered in Paraguay, Bolivia, and his native Spain. The priest was a Salesian provincial in Spain when Pope Francis named him archbishop of Rabat, Morocco—a former Spanish colony—in December 2017. He was consecrated in 2018, and the Pope named him a cardinal the following year.

A European who ministers in Africa, Cardinal López said that “our Church is still too Europeanized, Westernized. We have to live this journey helping each other, so the Church will come out more Catholic, universal.”

He recounted an anecdote in which an African bishop “reproached a European bishop for wanting to teach him a lesson when his churches were empty ... We Europeans must learn to be humble, but Africans should not boast either because success does not depend on numbers. We must help each other live the Gospel.”

Cardinal López then discussed Fiducia Supplicans, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s December 2023 declaration on the pastoral meaning of blessings.

The document, issued two months after the synod on synodality’s first session, “should have gone through a synodal path,” he said.

Cardinal López, though, is not a critic of the content of Fiducia Supplicans. He is president of the Regional Episcopal Conference of North Africa (CERNA), whose members are bishops in Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Western Sahara. (Remarkably, all of the active bishops in these nations are European, and none are from Africa.)

In a January statement on Fiducia Supplicans, the bishops of CERNA took a much warmer approach to the controversial document than did the bishops of the continent as a whole. CERNA stated that “when people who are in an irregular situation come together to ask for a blessing, it may be given as long as it does not cause confusion for the people concerned themselves or for others.”

During the press conference, Cardinal López criticized Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, OFM Cap, archbishop of Kinshasa (DR Congo) and president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), for issuing a continental statement critical of Fiducia Supplicans without, in Cardinal López’s view, taking adequate account of CERNA’s views. (SECAM, summarizing various African episcopal conferences’ statements on Fiducia, issued its statement on January 11; CERNA issued its statement on January 15.)

“Learning synodality is not a simple thing,” said Cardinal López. “We are going to have to overcome many setbacks and many moments in which we will have to ask for forgiveness, just as the president of the African bishops asked forgiveness for making a statement without waiting for us make to one.”

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Earlier coverage

• Synod retreat, day 1: ‘Stripping ourselves before the other and before God’ (CWN, 10/1)
• Synod retreat touches on homosexuality, ‘new ministries’; culminates in penitential vigil (CWN, 10/2)
• Opening Synod session, Pope stresses listening (CWN, 10/2)
• Synod, October 2: Pope defends inclusion of non-bishops; Cardinal Fernández: ‘no’ to women deacons (CWN, 10/3)
• Synod, October 3: Working groups discuss ‘Foundations’; ‘nothing new,’ says Cardinal Hollerich (CWN, 10/4)
• Cardinal Grech: Every Catholic is invited to weigh in on synod study groups’ deliberations (CWN, 10/4)
• Synod study group calls for ‘paradigm shift’ on controversial moral issues (CWN, 10/4)
• African bishops preparing document on polygamy (CWN, 10/4)

 

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