While the gathering was held behind closed doors, participants from four different continents said in interviews that much of the meeting took place in small group discussions, similar to the format used at the Bishops’ Conference meetings in the Vatican. This and other information was confirmed to NCR by at least two sources involved in the meeting.
The official list of participants, also obtained by NCR, included 197 participants, including cardinals, patriarchs and officials from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
The participants were divided into a total of 12 language groups (four in English, four in Italian, two in French and two in Spanish), with US Cardinals Timothy Dolan of New York and Wilton Gregory of Washington serving as representatives for two of the English language groups.
According to the testimonies of those interviewed, the pope encouraged all participants to speak from the heart.
Francis said the Vatican’s new apostolic constitution, Praedicate Evangelium, which reorganized the Vatican’s central bureaucracy, was the result of discussions with various Vatican offices. The process was led by the Pope’s Council of Cardinals, which was first created by Francis in 2013 and has met roughly quarterly since then, with many of the reforms phased in over the past nine years.
At the start of the meeting, Francis told the cardinals to speak from the heart as they discussed the new constitution, which officially came into effect on June 5.
A major change in the new constitution is to explicitly state that “any member of the faithful” can head most Vatican offices. The previous constitution, Pope John Paul II’s 1988 document Pastor Bonus, stated that the Vatican’s major offices were to be headed by a “cardinal prefect or the presiding archbishop.”
Participants in the meeting of cardinals noted that considerable time was devoted to this change, including discussion of specifically which Vatican offices could be headed by a lay person.
Renowned Jesuit regular and newly minted Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda previously told reporters after the publication of the new constitution that “the power to govern the church does not come from the Sacrament of [Holy] Orders’, meaning ordination, but in contrast, from ‘ordinary mission’.
In July, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet published a reflection in the Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, which examined historical precedents for the separation of jurisdiction or authority within the church from the sacrament of Holy Orders.
“What establishes the indissoluble unity of the power of order and jurisdiction is the figure of the Successor of Peter as the head of the college of bishops, who maintains in communication with them the supreme unity of power of order and jurisdiction and who can therefore implement its results generally in sacramental spheres as in legal or administrative spheres,” Ouellet wrote at the time. “He can also delegate and thus make members of God’s people partakers of the power of his jurisdiction.”
According to the participants, these writings and the comments of Ghirlanda and Ouellet reportedly served as the basis for many of the subsequent discussions about the role of the laity during the meeting.
Questions were also reportedly raised during the proceedings about the constitution’s requirement that the heads of each Vatican Court must serve a five-year term, renewable only once.
While some attendees questioned whether one person could adequately understand the inner workings of his Vatican office and carry out their mandate in such a limited time, others reportedly noted that this was necessary to keep any clerical or careerist attitudes in check. . Others reportedly also advocated restrictions to encourage dioceses around the world not to hesitate to send priests to serve in the Vatican for fear they would never return home.
During the second day of meetings, there was a brief discussion on the ongoing process for the 2021-23 Synod of Bishops and Francis’ emphasis on governing the church through synodality, which prioritizes greater listening, dialogue and participation of the laity .
While some participants reportedly argued that the theological concept of synodality is underdeveloped, other bishops defended it as having roots that can be traced back to the early church and, more recently, to the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65.
Francis himself reportedly intervened in this debate to say that the practice of synodality is not a novelty in the life of the church.
He is also said to have offered widespread acclaim for efforts to clean up the Vatican’s finances. Earlier this month, the Vatican released its financial statements and, earlier this summer, published new guidelines for all financial investments.
After the conclusion of two days of meetings – marking the first time since 2015 that Francis has convened the College of Cardinals – the pope presided over a Mass with nearly 200 of the college’s 226 members in St. Peter’s Basilica.
During the Mass, which included the 20 new cardinals Francis created on Aug. 27, Francis warned against what he described as the temptation to think they hold “prominent positions in [the] hierarchy’ and seeing their roles in a ‘worldly’ way.
To be a minister of the church, Francis said during his speech, means “to wonder before God’s plan” and to serve the mission of the church “wherever and as the Holy Spirit chooses.”
title: “The Vatican S Lay Leadership Is Said To Be A Key Issue In The Pope S Meeting With The World S Cardinals Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-12” author: “Norma Pully”
While the gathering was held behind closed doors, participants from four different continents said in interviews that much of the meeting took place in small group discussions, similar to the format used at the Bishops’ Conference meetings in the Vatican. This and other information was confirmed to NCR by at least two sources involved in the meeting.
The official list of participants, also obtained by NCR, included 197 participants, including cardinals, patriarchs and officials from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
The participants were divided into a total of 12 language groups (four in English, four in Italian, two in French and two in Spanish), with US Cardinals Timothy Dolan of New York and Wilton Gregory of Washington serving as representatives for two of the English language groups.
According to the testimonies of those interviewed, the pope encouraged all participants to speak from the heart.
Francis said the Vatican’s new apostolic constitution, Praedicate Evangelium, which reorganized the Vatican’s central bureaucracy, was the result of discussions with various Vatican offices. The process was led by the Pope’s Council of Cardinals, which was first created by Francis in 2013 and has met roughly quarterly since then, with many of the reforms phased in over the past nine years.
At the start of the meeting, Francis told the cardinals to speak from the heart as they discussed the new constitution, which officially came into effect on June 5.
A major change in the new constitution is to explicitly state that “any member of the faithful” can head most Vatican offices. The previous constitution, Pope John Paul II’s 1988 document Pastor Bonus, stated that the Vatican’s major offices were to be headed by a “cardinal prefect or the presiding archbishop.”
Participants in the meeting of cardinals noted that considerable time was devoted to this change, including discussion of specifically which Vatican offices could be headed by a lay person.
Renowned Jesuit regular and newly minted Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda previously told reporters after the publication of the new constitution that “the power to govern the church does not come from the Sacrament of [Holy] Orders’, meaning ordination, but in contrast, from ‘ordinary mission’.
In July, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet published a reflection in the Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, which examined historical precedents for the separation of jurisdiction or authority within the church from the sacrament of Holy Orders.
“What establishes the indissoluble unity of the power of order and jurisdiction is the figure of the Successor of Peter as the head of the college of bishops, who maintains in communication with them the supreme unity of power of order and jurisdiction and who can therefore implement its results generally in sacramental spheres as in legal or administrative spheres,” Ouellet wrote at the time. “He can also delegate and thus make members of God’s people partakers of the power of his jurisdiction.”
According to the participants, these writings and the comments of Ghirlanda and Ouellet reportedly served as the basis for many of the subsequent discussions about the role of the laity during the meeting.
Questions were also reportedly raised during the proceedings about the constitution’s requirement that the heads of each Vatican Court must serve a five-year term, renewable only once.
While some attendees questioned whether one person could adequately understand the inner workings of his Vatican office and carry out their mandate in such a limited time, others reportedly noted that this was necessary to keep any clerical or careerist attitudes in check. . Others reportedly also advocated restrictions to encourage dioceses around the world not to hesitate to send priests to serve in the Vatican for fear they would never return home.
During the second day of meetings, there was a brief discussion on the ongoing process for the 2021-23 Synod of Bishops and Francis’ emphasis on governing the church through synodality, which prioritizes greater listening, dialogue and participation of the laity .
While some participants reportedly argued that the theological concept of synodality is underdeveloped, other bishops defended it as having roots that can be traced back to the early church and, more recently, to the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65.
Francis himself reportedly intervened in this debate to say that the practice of synodality is not a novelty in the life of the church.
He is also said to have offered widespread acclaim for efforts to clean up the Vatican’s finances. Earlier this month, the Vatican released its financial statements and, earlier this summer, published new guidelines for all financial investments.
After the conclusion of two days of meetings – marking the first time since 2015 that Francis has convened the College of Cardinals – the pope presided over a Mass with nearly 200 of the college’s 226 members in St. Peter’s Basilica.
During the Mass, which included the 20 new cardinals Francis created on Aug. 27, Francis warned against what he described as the temptation to think they hold “prominent positions in [the] hierarchy’ and seeing their roles in a ‘worldly’ way.
To be a minister of the church, Francis said during his speech, means “to wonder before God’s plan” and to serve the mission of the church “wherever and as the Holy Spirit chooses.”
title: “The Vatican S Lay Leadership Is Said To Be A Key Issue In The Pope S Meeting With The World S Cardinals Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-05” author: “Ray Frey”
While the gathering was held behind closed doors, participants from four different continents said in interviews that much of the meeting took place in small group discussions, similar to the format used at the Bishops’ Conference meetings in the Vatican. This and other information was confirmed to NCR by at least two sources involved in the meeting.
The official list of participants, also obtained by NCR, included 197 participants, including cardinals, patriarchs and officials from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
The participants were divided into a total of 12 language groups (four in English, four in Italian, two in French and two in Spanish), with US Cardinals Timothy Dolan of New York and Wilton Gregory of Washington serving as representatives for two of the English language groups.
According to the testimonies of those interviewed, the pope encouraged all participants to speak from the heart.
Francis said the Vatican’s new apostolic constitution, Praedicate Evangelium, which reorganized the Vatican’s central bureaucracy, was the result of discussions with various Vatican offices. The process was led by the Pope’s Council of Cardinals, which was first created by Francis in 2013 and has met roughly quarterly since then, with many of the reforms phased in over the past nine years.
At the start of the meeting, Francis told the cardinals to speak from the heart as they discussed the new constitution, which officially came into effect on June 5.
A major change in the new constitution is to explicitly state that “any member of the faithful” can head most Vatican offices. The previous constitution, Pope John Paul II’s 1988 document Pastor Bonus, stated that the Vatican’s major offices were to be headed by a “cardinal prefect or the presiding archbishop.”
Participants in the meeting of cardinals noted that considerable time was devoted to this change, including discussion of specifically which Vatican offices could be headed by a lay person.
Renowned Jesuit regular and newly minted Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda previously told reporters after the publication of the new constitution that “the power to govern the church does not come from the Sacrament of [Holy] Orders’, meaning ordination, but in contrast, from ‘ordinary mission’.
In July, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet published a reflection in the Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, which examined historical precedents for the separation of jurisdiction or authority within the church from the sacrament of Holy Orders.
“What establishes the indissoluble unity of the power of order and jurisdiction is the figure of the Successor of Peter as the head of the college of bishops, who maintains in communication with them the supreme unity of power of order and jurisdiction and who can therefore implement its results generally in sacramental spheres as in legal or administrative spheres,” Ouellet wrote at the time. “He can also delegate and thus make members of God’s people partakers of the power of his jurisdiction.”
According to the participants, these writings and the comments of Ghirlanda and Ouellet reportedly served as the basis for many of the subsequent discussions about the role of the laity during the meeting.
Questions were also reportedly raised during the proceedings about the constitution’s requirement that the heads of each Vatican Court must serve a five-year term, renewable only once.
While some attendees questioned whether one person could adequately understand the inner workings of his Vatican office and carry out their mandate in such a limited time, others reportedly noted that this was necessary to keep any clerical or careerist attitudes in check. . Others reportedly also advocated restrictions to encourage dioceses around the world not to hesitate to send priests to serve in the Vatican for fear they would never return home.
During the second day of meetings, there was a brief discussion on the ongoing process for the 2021-23 Synod of Bishops and Francis’ emphasis on governing the church through synodality, which prioritizes greater listening, dialogue and participation of the laity .
While some participants reportedly argued that the theological concept of synodality is underdeveloped, other bishops defended it as having roots that can be traced back to the early church and, more recently, to the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65.
Francis himself reportedly intervened in this debate to say that the practice of synodality is not a novelty in the life of the church.
He is also said to have offered widespread acclaim for efforts to clean up the Vatican’s finances. Earlier this month, the Vatican released its financial statements and, earlier this summer, published new guidelines for all financial investments.
After the conclusion of two days of meetings – marking the first time since 2015 that Francis has convened the College of Cardinals – the pope presided over a Mass with nearly 200 of the college’s 226 members in St. Peter’s Basilica.
During the Mass, which included the 20 new cardinals Francis created on Aug. 27, Francis warned against what he described as the temptation to think they hold “prominent positions in [the] hierarchy’ and seeing their roles in a ‘worldly’ way.
To be a minister of the church, Francis said during his speech, means “to wonder before God’s plan” and to serve the mission of the church “wherever and as the Holy Spirit chooses.”
title: “The Vatican S Lay Leadership Is Said To Be A Key Issue In The Pope S Meeting With The World S Cardinals Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-10-30” author: “Joseph Thomas”
While the gathering was held behind closed doors, participants from four different continents said in interviews that much of the meeting took place in small group discussions, similar to the format used at the Bishops’ Conference meetings in the Vatican. This and other information was confirmed to NCR by at least two sources involved in the meeting.
The official list of participants, also obtained by NCR, included 197 participants, including cardinals, patriarchs and officials from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
The participants were divided into a total of 12 language groups (four in English, four in Italian, two in French and two in Spanish), with US Cardinals Timothy Dolan of New York and Wilton Gregory of Washington serving as representatives for two of the English language groups.
According to the testimonies of those interviewed, the pope encouraged all participants to speak from the heart.
Francis said the Vatican’s new apostolic constitution, Praedicate Evangelium, which reorganized the Vatican’s central bureaucracy, was the result of discussions with various Vatican offices. The process was led by the Pope’s Council of Cardinals, which was first created by Francis in 2013 and has met roughly quarterly since then, with many of the reforms phased in over the past nine years.
At the start of the meeting, Francis told the cardinals to speak from the heart as they discussed the new constitution, which officially came into effect on June 5.
A major change in the new constitution is to explicitly state that “any member of the faithful” can head most Vatican offices. The previous constitution, Pope John Paul II’s 1988 document Pastor Bonus, stated that the Vatican’s major offices were to be headed by a “cardinal prefect or the presiding archbishop.”
Participants in the meeting of cardinals noted that considerable time was devoted to this change, including discussion of specifically which Vatican offices could be headed by a lay person.
Renowned Jesuit regular and newly minted Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda previously told reporters after the publication of the new constitution that “the power to govern the church does not come from the Sacrament of [Holy] Orders’, meaning ordination, but in contrast, from ‘ordinary mission’.
In July, Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet published a reflection in the Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, which examined historical precedents for the separation of jurisdiction or authority within the church from the sacrament of Holy Orders.
“What establishes the indissoluble unity of the power of order and jurisdiction is the figure of the Successor of Peter as the head of the college of bishops, who maintains in communication with them the supreme unity of power of order and jurisdiction and who can therefore implement its results generally in sacramental spheres as in legal or administrative spheres,” Ouellet wrote at the time. “He can also delegate and thus make members of God’s people partakers of the power of his jurisdiction.”
According to the participants, these writings and the comments of Ghirlanda and Ouellet reportedly served as the basis for many of the subsequent discussions about the role of the laity during the meeting.
Questions were also reportedly raised during the proceedings about the constitution’s requirement that the heads of each Vatican Court must serve a five-year term, renewable only once.
While some attendees questioned whether one person could adequately understand the inner workings of his Vatican office and carry out their mandate in such a limited time, others reportedly noted that this was necessary to keep any clerical or careerist attitudes in check. . Others reportedly also advocated restrictions to encourage dioceses around the world not to hesitate to send priests to serve in the Vatican for fear they would never return home.
During the second day of meetings, there was a brief discussion on the ongoing process for the 2021-23 Synod of Bishops and Francis’ emphasis on governing the church through synodality, which prioritizes greater listening, dialogue and participation of the laity .
While some participants reportedly argued that the theological concept of synodality is underdeveloped, other bishops defended it as having roots that can be traced back to the early church and, more recently, to the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65.
Francis himself reportedly intervened in this debate to say that the practice of synodality is not a novelty in the life of the church.
He is also said to have offered widespread acclaim for efforts to clean up the Vatican’s finances. Earlier this month, the Vatican released its financial statements and, earlier this summer, published new guidelines for all financial investments.
After the conclusion of two days of meetings – marking the first time since 2015 that Francis has convened the College of Cardinals – the pope presided over a Mass with nearly 200 of the college’s 226 members in St. Peter’s Basilica.
During the Mass, which included the 20 new cardinals Francis created on Aug. 27, Francis warned against what he described as the temptation to think they hold “prominent positions in [the] hierarchy’ and seeing their roles in a ‘worldly’ way.
To be a minister of the church, Francis said during his speech, means “to wonder before God’s plan” and to serve the mission of the church “wherever and as the Holy Spirit chooses.”