Synod, October 5: work on ‘Foundations’ concludes; Lebanese, Haitian prelates recount suffering
October 07, 2024
On October 5—the fourth day of the second and final session of the synod on synodality—participants gathered in working groups (circuli minores) in Paul VI Audience Hall to conclude their three-day discussion of “Foundations,” the opening section of the session’s instrumentum laboris, or working document (synod agenda).
“The #Synod is a journey in which the Lord places in our hands the history, dreams, and hopes of a great people composed of our brothers and sisters in the same faith,” Pope Francis tweeted on October 5. “May we seek, with them and for them, to understand how to arrive where He seeks to lead us.”
L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, reported that the session began with songs, a reading (in French) of Luke 10:17-24 (the Gospel reading of the day), and a violin performance. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said the opening prayer.
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—and the reports of the working groups—in one sentence: “This morning, Saturday 5 October, in the Paul VI Hall, the work of the Second Session of the XVI General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality continued, with the third session of the circuli minores and the preparation of the reports of the latter.”
Press conference
Speakers at the daily press briefing (video), led by Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery for Communication, 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 on October 5, as well as during the third general congregation the previous afternoon:
- an “urgent plea of peace” and condemnation of fundamentalism
- “a widespread call to denounce the ‘main causes of all evils,’ namely the arms trade”
- “listening to the cry of the poor and the need to include them as participants and not as mere recipients”
- “It must no longer happen, Synod participants said, that women and LGBTQ+ people who want to serve the Church and do so with great commitment find themselves marginalized”
- “evangelical radicalism” attracts young people to the Gospel
- “young people need to breathe,” and “adults must breathe with them”
- “ecumenism, diocesan synods, the role of the Pontiff in post-synodal assemblies”
- “across the board, it emerged that synodality offers a way to combat clericalism.”
Catherine Clifford, a Canadian theology professor, referred to the emptying of churches in the West and said that “the Global South is assuming an increasingly central role in our conversations ... The Church is not disappearing.” Bishop Pablo Virgilio S. David of Kalookan, Philippines, discussed Philippine migration and the establishment of 20 mission stations in his diocese.
Maronite Bishop Mounir Khairallah of Batrun, Lebanon, and Archbishop Launay Saturné of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, spoke about the intense suffering in their nations.
“We are in despair,” said Archbishop Saturné, who noted that 70% of the capital’s residents have fled because of violence.
“I come from a country that has been engulfed in fire and blood for 50 years now,” said Bishop Khairallah. The prelate, now 71, recounted:
I have personally experienced forgiveness. When I was five years old, someone came to our house and brutally murdered my parents. I have an aunt who is a nun in the Lebanese Maronite order. She came to our house to take us four children—the eldest was six years old, the youngest two—and took us to her monastery. In the church, she invited us to kneel and pray—to pray to God for mercy, for love. She told us: “Let us not pray so much for your parents; they are martyrs before God. Let us instead pray for those who killed them and seek to forgive throughout your lives. Thus you will be the children of your Father, who is in Heaven.”
“Therefore, even today, despite all that happens—50 years of blind, savage war—despite everything, we as peoples of all cultures of all confessions, want peace; we are capable of building peace,” he continued. “Let us put aside our politicians, ours and those of the world, the great powers: they make their interests at our expense. But we, as a people, do not want all this; we reject it.”
The Lebanese prelate concluded:
I think that the greatest decision to be made is that the Church, through this Synod, be a messenger of living together, that is, in listening to the other, respecting each other, dialoguing with each other, respecting them, and then freeing ourselves from the fear of the other. We must free ourselves from this fear, because it dwells within us. I think this would be a first step as a great recommendation of this Synod for humanity.
The synod was not in session on October 6, a Sunday. Participants resume their deliberations on October 7.
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)
- Synod, October 4: leading African cardinal criticized for inadequate consultation in rejecting same-sex blessings (CWN, 10/5)
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