Pope Francis said he would not write his own address to the Synod and published the final document of the members

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — After members of the Synod of Bishops approved their final document, Pope Francis announced that he would not write the usual post-synodal apostolic exhortation, but would propose a final document for the entire church to implement.

“The document already contains very specific instructions that can provide guidance for the mission of churches on different continents and in different contexts,” he told synod members at the end of October 26.

“For this reason I do not intend to publish the apostolic exhortation. What we approved is enough,” he said. Instead, he ordered the publication of the synod’s final document.

With the exception of the first synods convened by St. Paul VI in 1967 and 1971, all ordinary meetings of the Synod of Bishops were accompanied by instructions from the Pope on the synod’s themes and discussions.

Members synod on conciliarityafter meeting for a month in 2023 and again from October 2 to October 26, they approved their final document by voting on each of the 155 points. All paragraphs were adopted with the approval of more than two-thirds of the members present and voting.

The document presents synodality as a style of Christian life and ministry based on the “equal dignity of all the baptized” and the recognition that they all have something to offer to the mission of proclaiming salvation in Christ.

Practical proposals included the need to make pastoral councils mandatory for every parish and to ensure that these bodies truly represented the members of the parish, to recognize the contributions of women to the life and ministry of the church, and to recruit more women and lay people to teach in seminaries.

The 10 study groups the pope created in the spring to examine some of the most difficult issues raised by the synod – women’s ministry, seminary education, relations between bishops and religious communities, the role of nuncios – will continue to work before putting proposals to him, the pope said. “It takes time to come to a choice that affects the entire church.”

However, he promised that “this is not a classic way of postponing decisions indefinitely.”

Instead, he told synod members, it “is consistent with the synodal style with which even the Petrine ministry should be carried out: listening, convening, discerning, deciding and evaluating. And at these stages pauses, silence, and prayer are necessary. a style we are learning together, little by little.”

According to the Pope, much of the 2021-2023 Synod process involved hearings at the parish, diocesan, national and continental levels, as well as helping Synod members themselves learn to listen respectfully to each other and listen to the voice of the Church. The Holy Spirit is in these conversations.

The resulting document “is a triple gift,” he said, and is given to him first and foremost. “The Bishop of Rome, as I often remind myself, needs to practice listening, and he wants to practice listening in order to respond every day to the words of the Lord: “Strengthen your brothers and sisters in the faith. Feed My sheep.”

(Read: Synodality – and “controversial” issues – will not go away: conclusions from the final document of the Synod)

The Pope’s task, he said, “is to protect and strengthen – as St. Basil – the harmony that the Spirit continues to spread in God’s church, in the relationships between churches, despite all the struggles, tensions and divisions that mark his path to the full manifestation of the Kingdom of God, which the vision of the prophet Isaiah invites us to imagine as the banquet prepared by God for all peoples – all with the hope that no one will disappear.”

Pope Francis repeated a phrase that has become a refrain since he first uttered it at World Youth Day in Portugal in 2023: “Everything, everything, everything! No one is excluded, everyone.”

The goal, he said, is harmony, not uniformity. This is a sign of the Holy Spirit, as it was at Pentecost, when people of different nations heard the disciples proclaiming the wonderful works of God in their own languages.

The Church, the Pope said, “is a sign and instrument of how God has already set the table and is waiting. His grace through the Spirit whispers words of love into the heart of every person. It is given to us to strengthen the voice of this whisper, without preventing it from opening doors, without erecting walls.”

“It’s so bad when the women and men of the church build walls,” he said. The gospel is “for everyone, everyone, everyone! We must not behave as if we were dispensers of grace, appropriating the treasure for ourselves and tying the hands of a merciful God.”