The Vatican released its latest synod implementation document on Monday, bringing to mind a remark Pope Francis made a few years ago about how the Church is not a large multinational company run by managers carefully studying how best to sell their product.
“The Church,” Francis said to journalists on 13 November 2021, “does not build itself on the basis of its own project, it does not draw from itself the strength to move forward and it does not live by marketing strategies.”
Readers of the document issued Monday by the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops might be forgiven for thinking the Secretariat never got the memo.
Titled Pathways for the Implementation Phase of the Synod 2025–2028 and stretching to 24 typeset pages complete with full-colour graphics, pull quotes and other bells and whistles, the document describes itself as “a framework for consideration” offered to local Churches, “invit[ing] them to share their initiatives, contributing to the broader ecclesial discernment.”
Before all that—or alongside it—those following from home may be wondering: didn’t the three-year process end last year when the final Synod of Bishops meeting on synodality concluded?
That three-year process began in 2021 with diocesan meetings, followed by a continental phase ending in 2023. A three-week session was held in Rome in October 2023, followed by another in 2024, which was expected to conclude the process. It was then announced earlier this year that additional phases would continue through to 2028.
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