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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2025
The XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (4 October 2023 to 27 October 2024) considered what it means to be a ‘Synodal Church – Communion, Participation and Mission’. Its celebration was key to understanding the pontificate of Pope Francis: in October 2015, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Synod of Bishops by St Paul VI, he said: ‘From the beginning of my ministry as Bishop of Rome, I sought to enhance the Synod, which is one of the most precious legacies of the Second Vatican Council […] it is precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the Church in the third millennium’.1 This article examines the extent to which the Roman Catholic church can be said to be synodally led and episcopally governed.
1 https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-03/synod-of-bishops-to-take-up-theme-ofsynodality-in-2022.html (accessed 9 September 2024). He has also said, quoted in the same article, ‘is very close to my heart: synodality is a style, it is walking together, and it is what the Lord expects of the Church in the third millennium’.
2 https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_01011995_profile_en.html (accessed 1 September 2024). Please note that this section on the Synod of Bishops does not address the concept of synodality within the Eastern Catholic Churches, which are more akin to Bishops’ Conferences in the Latin Church.
3 The Code of Canon Law 1983 defines the Bishops’ Conference as ‘a permanent institution, is a group of bishops of some nation or certain territory who jointly exercise certain pastoral functions for the Christian faithful of their territory in order to promote the greater good which the Church offers to humanity, especially through forms and programs of the apostolate fittingly adapted to the circumstances of time and place, according to the norm of law’ (Canon 447). Even though some countries and documents refer to ‘episcopal conferences’, e.g. the Italian Bishops’ Conference is called the Conferenza Episcopale Italiana, the terminology in the universal law emphasises that it is a conference of Bishops rather than having episcopal authority in and of itself, in the sense that the Roman Pontiff does as Supreme Pastor of the Universal Church and diocesan Bishops have as the proper pastor of their own particular Church.
4 See https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_01011995_profile_en.html (accessed 1 September 2024).
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid. This key aspect to the Magisterium of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964, underpins the canonical dispositions on the Supreme Authority in the Church.
7 Ibid.
8 Francis, Apostolic Constitution on the Synod of Bishops, Episcopalis communio, 15 September 2018, 6.
9 Ibid, 7.
10 Ibid, 5.
11 C Podmore, The Governance of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, GS Mis 910, 7 January 2009, para 3.21, which can be accessed here: http://thinkinganglicans.org.uk/uploads/gsmisc910.html, accessed 6 February 2025.
12 See https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2023/documents/20231004-omelia-nuovicardinali.html (accessed 16th September 2023).