VATICAN (Agencies): The Vatican Press Office released the list of participants in the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on July 7. Thirty bishops from Asia will be part of the synod, which began its preparations in 2021 and will run into 2024. It is predicted to be most transformative event in the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council.
In addition to all Eastern Rite patriarchs and the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences [FABC] president, Charles Cardinal Bo, archbishop of Yangon, Asian bishops include 28 cardinals and bishops designated by the collegial bodies of each region of Asia. To their names, Pope Francis added only one, Bishop Stephen Chow Sau Yan, SJ, of Hong Kong.
The synod will reflect on the theme, “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission,” and members will be called upon to continue to carry forward a “process of spiritual discernment” that was begun in 2021 and continue with a second synod assembly in 2024.
AsiaNews observed that “unlike the last Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, no prelate from mainland China is on the list this time. In October 2018, two Chinese bishops, Bishop Joseph Guo Jincai of Chengde and Bishop John Baptist Yang Xiaoting of Yan’An, participated in the Synod on Young People. On that occasion, the synod was held a few weeks after the signing of the Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China on episcopal appointments.
Four lay women from Hong Kong, Myanmar, the Philippines and Malaysia are among the 10 members—priests, religious and lay people—picked by Pope Francis to be non-bishop members of the synod from a list provided by the FABC. Vanessa Cheng Siu-wai, a member of the Focolare Movement from Hong Kong, who participated in the Continental Assembly of the Synodal process in Bangkok, is among the them.
Momoko Nishimura, a consecrated laywoman from Japan will be one of the president delegates. She is a member of the Servants of the Gospel of God’s Mercy [SEMD], a missionary community. She also translated of Pope Francis’s encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, into Japanese.
The composition of the synod assembly will be more diverse than ever, as the list of the 363 participants appears to reflect a relative balance of voices from across the Catholic spectrum, yet it also highlights ongoing tensions in the Pope Francis era. The participants for the first general assembly of the Synod, which runs from October 4 to 29, includes dozens of religious men and women and laypeople from around the world.
According to Mario Cardinal Grech, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, more names are going to be added to the list of nonvoting members, such as experts and representatives of non-Catholic Christian communities.
For now, the list of voting members is complete, numbering 363 cardinals, bishops, priests, religious and lay men and women—a first in the history of the synod. Pope Francis made significant changes to who can be a voting member of the Synod on Synodality and he gave women the right to vote in the synod.
Out of the 364 members who can vote, which includes the pope, 54 are women—either lay or religious; the number of cardinals appointed as members also is 54.
More than a quarter of all the voting members, that is 26.4 per cent, are not bishops, according to the 21-page list of the appointments.
Those the pope appointed to take part in the October 4 to 29 synod include 169 cardinals or bishops representing national bishops’ conferences; 20 cardinals or bishops representing Eastern Catholic Churches; five cardinals or bishops representing regional federations of bishops’ conferences; and 20 heads of Vatican dicasteries, which includes one layperson, Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery for Communication.
The pope also appointed five religious men and five religious women to represent the International Union of Superiors General and the Union of Superiors General. There are an additional 50 papally appointed members, the majority of whom are cardinals and bishops, but they include 11 priests, religious and one layman and one laywoman.
Another novelty is a large group of non-bishop voting members who represent the “continental assemblies” and are named “witnesses of the synodal process.” There are 10 members in each group divided by continent: Africa; North America; Latin America; Asia; Eastern Churches and the Middle East; Europe; and Oceania, for a total of 70 individuals who are all priests, religious or lay men and women.
Among the 16 who are part of the synod’s ordinary council are: Joseph Cardinal Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, the US; Gérald Cardinal Lacroix of Québec, Canada; and Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, Australia.
Nine members will serve as delegate presidents of the assembly and they include: Bishop Flores of Brownsville; Coptic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sedrak; one priest, Italian Father Giuseppe Bonfrate; one nun, Mexican Sister of St. Joseph María de los Dolores Palencia; and one consecrated laywoman, Momoko Nishimura of Japan.
Pope Francis will serve as president and Mario Cardinal Grech as the synod’s secretary-general. The list of nonvoting members is not complete, Cardinal Grech said.
That list released on July 7 included two spiritual assistants: British Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe and Italian Benedictine Mother Maria Ignazia Angelini.
All synod participants will be expected to attend a three-day retreat before the synod begins in early October. All of the 57 nonvoting “experts and facilitators” listed as of July 7 are priests and religious and lay men and women. They include: US Sister Maria Cimperman, who is a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart; Jesuit Father David McCallum; and Australian theologian Tracey Rowland.
