Synod on Synodality: Program for the Second Session (2024)

Source: FSSPX News

At a press conference on September 16, 2024, Cardinals Jean-Claude Hollerich, General Rapporteur of the Synod, and Mario Grech, General Secretary, presented the Second Session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will take place in Rome from October 2 to 27, 2024.

It has already been said on this site that the changes in participants are few, but sometimes significant, as in the case of the Chinese bishops. Participants include full members, special guests, and other participants, as was already the case. They number 368, of which 272 are bishops.

It has been explained, as reported by Vatican News, that the pace will be lighter than last year: fewer plenary meetings, more moments of pause for reflection or prayer.

As in the previous session, participants followed a two-day spiritual retreat on September 30 and October 1, preached by Dominican Fr. Timothy Radcliffe and Benedictine Mother Maria Ignazia Angelini. A penitential ceremony was scheduled for the evening of October 1, to confess the (new) sins of the Church. This has already been mentioned on this site.

The program also includes an ecumenical prayer with Pope Francis on the evening of October 11, 2024, as was the case at the first session. This date was chosen to commemorate the solemn opening of the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962.

Cardinal Grech explained that this great Council “inaugurated a new ecumenical traditional for the Catholic Church, of which the ongoing Synod is an expression and witness, in the active desire to help the entire Church advance on the path of full unity.”

Finally, to prepare for the final phase of the Ordinary Assembly, participants will have another day of spiritual retreat on October 21, 2024: “It will be a sort of pit-stop, to implore from the Lord his gifts in view of the discernment on the draft Final Document,” Cardinal Grech commented.

Last but not least, four fora will be open to all. Vatican News gives the details: “Two fora will take place on October 9, one on ‘The People of God, Subject of Mission’ [...] and the other on ‘The Role and Authority of the Bishop in a Synodal Church’ [...] The remaining two fora will be held on October 16. The themes will be ‘Mutual Relations between the Local and Universal Church’ [...] and ‘The Exercise of Primacy and the Synod of Bishops’.”

These fora will deal with the theme from an ecclesiological point of view, in relation to the content of the Instrumentum laboris, and will include theologians, canonists, and bishops.