The People of God Called to Mission

Themes from the Synod's First Two Public Theological-Pastoral Fora

One of the innovations at this year’s session of the Synod on Synodality is the addition of four public fora on theological themes related to the conversations being held by the Synod delegates. The topics chosen for the fora include:

• “The People of God, Subject of Mission”

• “The Role and Authority of the Bishop in a Synodal Church”

• “Mutual Relations between the Local and Universal Church”

• “The Exercise of Primacy and the Synod of Bishops”

The first two were held on Wednesday, October 9, and the latter two were held this Wednesday, October 16. In this post, I will look at the fora from last week, and in a later post I will summarize this week’s fora.

Vatican News, which has produced daily reports on the goings-on at the Synod and provided videos of events like the pre-Synod retreat and the ecumenical prayer service held on October 11, thoughtfully livestreamed the two fora last week and left recordings of the events on YouTube.

With a little help from artificial intelligence, I watched the nine presentations from last week’s two fora, given in four of the Synod’s five official languages: English, French, Italian, and Spanish. The first forum on the People of God was moderated by Dr. Klara Csiszar, a professor of pastoral theology at the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University of Linz, Austria, and included presentations by:

• Fr. Ormond Rush, a professor of theology at Australian Catholic University

• Bishop Lúcio Andrice Muandula of the Diocese of Xai-Xai, in Mozambique

• Dr. Donata Horak, a professor of canon law at the Alberoni Theological Study in Piacenza, Italy, affiliated with the Pontifical Angelicum University

• Dr. Thomas Söding, a professor of New Testament at the Catholic Faculty of Theology of Ruhr-Universität Bochum, in Germany.

Bishop Muandula is one of the nine delegate presidents at the Synod. Csiszar, Rush, and Söding are non-voting theological experts at the Synod, and Horak is not a participant at the Synod assembly.

The second forum on the role of the bishop was moderated by Dr. Anna Rowlands, the St. Hilda Chair in Catholic Social Thought and Practice at Durham University in the United Kingdom. The presenters included:

• Fr. Carlos Galli, a professor of theology at the faculty of theology of the Catholic University of Argentina

• Sr. Gloria Liliana Franco Echeverri, O.D.N., the president of the Confederation of Latin American Religious (CLAR)

• Archbishop Roberto Repole of the Archdiocese of Turin, Italy, who is likewise a theologian

• Fr. Gilles Routhier, a professor at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Laval, in Quebec, Canada

• Fr. Matteo Visioli, a professor of canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Bishop Repole (who was recently chosen by Pope Francis to become a cardinal in December) is a delegate at the Synod representing the bishops of Italy, and Sr. Franco is a delegate chosen by Pope Francis to attend the gathering. Rowlands, Galli, and Routhier are all non-voting theological experts present at the Synod, and Fr. Visioli is not a participant at the Synod assembly. I highlighted most of the fora participants in my series on the Synod last year.

Rather than summarizing all nine presentations, which were closely related, I will summarize some of the key themes below. Both Vatican News (here and here) and the National Catholic Reporter (here) have provided reporting on the fora, but neither, in my opinion, really captured the key themes from the presentations or the linkages between them.