Synods and Conferences

Abstract

At the opening of the fourth and final session of the Second Vatican Council in September 1965, Pope Paul VI established the Synod of Bishops. In his Moto Proprio Apostolica Sollicitudo, by which the Synod was instituted, the Pope stated that the Council, at which all serving bishops were gathered, was the source of his conviction that the Pope should collaborate with bishops more closely. The Synod has since met fifteen times in ordinary session and a sixteenth session is currently in progress. Pope Francis has already presided at three ordinary sessions of the Synod, on evangelization (October 2012), the family (October 2015) and young people (October 2018). Although each of these themes is close to his heart, the organization of these Synods was essentially unchanged from the established pattern. On 15 September 2018, however, he promulgated the apostolic constitution Episcopalis communio, on the Synod of Bishops. The Pope here endorses the collaborative principle by which the Synod was founded, though he greatly broadens its dimensions to encompass the co-working not just of the Pope and other bishops but of the bishops and the whole Church. Bishops are, like all Christians, members of the people of God and of the Church by virtue of their baptism. They are thereby teachers but also disciples, walking as shepherds sometimes in front of their people but at other times within their midst and behind them. This suggests that the Synod of Bishops ‘must increasingly