By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY — Local Churches and bishops worldwide will be instrumental in helping implement the proposals and foster the spirit of the 2024 final document of the Synod of Bishops on synodality, the Vatican synod office said.
(The Diocese of San Diego began implementing the recommendations of the final document in early 2024, under the leadership of Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, the then local bishop. Bishop Michael Pham, the cardinal’s successor, has said that continuing the synod’s implementation will remain a priority at the diocese.)
To more effectively carry out the mission of evangelization, the implementation phase of the synod “aims to examine new practices and structures that will make the life of the Church more synodal,” the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops said in a new set of guidelines released July 7.
“Concretely, the priority is to offer the people of God new opportunities to walk together and reflect on these experiences in order to reap their fruits for the mission and share them,” the text said.
The 24-page text, titled “Pathways for the Implementation Phase of the Synod,” is a guide for bishops and synodal teams, and an invitation to them to share their initiatives as they apply the synod on synodality’s final proposals locally. It also seeks to answer some key questions the office received recently. The text was released in multiple languages at synod.va.
Divided into four chapters, the document offers responses to: What is the implementation phase and what are its objectives?; Who will participate in the implementation phase and what are their tasks and responsibilities?; How to engage with the 2024 synod assembly’s final document during the implementation phase?; And what method and tools can help shape the implementation phase?
The guidelines underline how the local Churches must play an active role in this phase, including by reaching out to diverse communities such as the marginalized, young people and those resistant to the synodal process, because, “in order to truly walk together, we cannot lose the contribution of their point of view.”
Engagement should extend beyond the parish to include schools, hospitals, prisons and digital platforms, it said, and relations with religious communities, movements and associations should be strengthened to further exchange the variety of gifts toward mission.
Synodality “cannot be a path limited to a core group of ‘supporters,’” it said.
“On the contrary, it is important that this new process contribute concretely ‘to expand possibilities for participation and for the exercise of differentiated co-responsibility by all the baptized, men and women,’ in a spirit of reciprocity,” it said. “Moreover, it is crucial that it aims to involve those who have so far remained on the margins of the ecclesial renewal process established by the synod.”
The diocesan or eparchial bishop is the first person responsible for the implementation phase, the guidelines said. “It is his responsibility to initiate it, officially indicate its duration, methods and objectives, accompany its progress and conclude it, validating its results.”
This phase “will be an appropriate opportunity to exercise authority in a synodal way,” it said, reminding bishops they are not alone and should encourage all members of the Church to share the journey together.
Synodal teams and participatory bodies “will be essential in the implementation phase as well,” the guidelines said, so “existing teams should be valued and, where necessary, renewed; those that have been suspended should be reactivated and appropriately integrated; and new teams should be formed where they have not been established previously.”
The three-year period of implementation and evaluation on the local, national, regional and international levels will culminate in a “celebration of the ecclesial assembly” in October 2028 at the Vatican “to share the fruits of the implementation phase and to have a kind of evaluation,” Xavière Missionary Sister Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, said.
