This Wednesday, the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the future of the Catholic Church began. This process started in 2021 and is expected to be completed in 2024.

This global symposium is expected to address issues that the conservative wing sees with concern, such as the treatment of divorced women and LGBTQ people of faith. Female deacons and priestly celibacy are also discussed.

During the opening Mass, Pope Francis set the tone for the gathering, asking the Church to be “hospitable” with “doors open to all.” He recalled that the synod has no room for “human strategies, political calculations or ideological battles.”

Pope Francis will allow women and laity to vote in the Synod of Bishops

The Pope urged “to be a Church that contemplates with a joyful heart the actions of God and discerns the present; who, amid the sometimes agitated waves of our time, does not lose courage, does not look for ideological escapes, does not entrench himself behind acquired beliefs, does not give in to comfortable solutions, does not let the world dictate its agenda.”

“The main task of the Synod” is “to put God back in the center of our gaze, to be a Church that views humanity with mercy. A united and fraternal Church, or at least that is what it tries to be, that listens and dialogues; a Church that blesses and encourages, that helps those who seek the Lord, that shakes the indifferent into health, that sets in motion routes to educate people in the beauty of faith,” he said.

A total of 364 voting members will participate and one hundred experts will intervene behind closed doors and hand over the proposals to Francisco, who will decide on these ideas.

Before the meeting, five cardinals asked Francis in an open letter to the faithful to reaffirm Catholic doctrine on the treatment of homosexual couples and the ordination of women.

In his response, the 86-year-old pope appeared to suggest a way for clergy to bless same-sex couples, something not recognized by the Holy See but practiced in countries such as Germany and Belgium.

While insisting that the Church only recognizes marriage between a man and a woman, the Pope said that “we cannot be judges who only deny, reject and exclude.”

“Pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of blessing, requested by one or more people, that do not involve a false concept of marriage,” he wrote.

“We are not here to carry out a parliamentary meeting or a reform plan,” but to “stand together,” the Pope said, warning of “some dangerous temptations: being a rigid Church, arming itself against the world and looking out to back; to be an apathetic church, subject to the fashions of the world; to be a tired Church, withdrawn into itself.”

This will be the first time that nuns and lay women will be able to participate and even vote.

A second session of the assembly is scheduled for October 2024, so concrete decisions are not expected soon. (JO)