Pope Francis warns Vatican summit against pet agendas, defends reforms

Pope Francis warns Vatican summit against pet agendas, defends reforms

By Joshua McElwee

Pope Francis opened a global Catholic summit on Wednesday with a warning that delegates should not seek to foist pet agendas onto the assembly, an apparent attempt to prevent discussions bogging down in divisive issues such as women's ordination.

At a Mass in St. Peter's Square to open the event, known as a Synod of Bishops, he told the hundreds of cardinals, bishops and lay people taking part not to treat their contributions at the month-long summit as "agendas to be imposed".

"Otherwise we will end up locking ourselves into dialogues among the deaf, where participants seek to advance their own causes or agendas without listening to others."

The Vatican summit, which aims to chart the future of the Catholic Church and includes 368 voting members from more than 110 countries, drew fierce censure from the pope's conservative critics at an earlier session last year.

The critics expressed particular concern about plans to discuss blessings for same-sex couples and to allow women to be deacons - Church ministers who are ordained like priests but cannot celebrate Mass.

But criticism from conservative quarters has been dulled this year as most of the hottest issues at the summit have been assigned to study groups that will make final reports to Francis, who is 87, only next June.

Francis told the delegates on Wednesday they should be "ready even to sacrifice (their) own point of view in order to give life to something new".

POPE DEFENDS REFORMS

Later on Wednesday at the summit's first working session, Francis appeared to respond to conservative Catholics who last year sharply criticised some of his recent reforms of the synod.

One major change involved the gathering's membership.

In past decades, synod sessions mainly had cardinals, bishops and priests as full voting members. But last year Francis introduced reforms to increase the number of lay members, and included women as full voting members for the first time. Nearly 60 women are voting members again in 2024.

Conservative Catholics criticised the decision to include lay persons as voting members, saying it could endanger the Church's top-down authority structure.

The pope told synod members on Wednesday he "acted in continuity" with a series of major reforms undertaken by the Church in the 1960s, which emphasized the role of all Catholics in the global institution.

He also warned of the danger of "pitting the hierarchy against the lay faithful", adding: "It is certainly not a matter of replacing one with the other. ... Rather, we are being asked to work together".

Also included in this year's synod are 16 "fraternal delegates" from other Christian denominations, who attend as observers. Discussions at the gathering take place largely behind closed doors.

The 2024 assembly is scheduled to vote on a final document on Oct. 26. The pope will then decide whether to issue his own text, with possible doctrinal changes, but probably only after receiving the study group reports in mid-2025.