Participants in the synod on synodality endorsed a report on October 28 proposing potentially far-reaching changes to foster a synodal Church. The 42-page “synthesis report” – “A synodal Church in mission” understands Synodality as “the walk of Christians with Christ toward the Kingdom, together with all humanity,” it said. This perhaps can be called deconstruction which is journey from an “I” to a “we”. This is the change Pope Francis brought about in the church. It became “a tool at the service of ongoing discernment” attribution of greater responsibility to the episcopal conferences in this area is urged.
After those processes, 365 voting dele-gates – more than 75% of them bishops – were invited to spend four weeks in October in Rome, discussing the topic of synodality, Vatican’s Paul VI Hall included almost 100 staffers, observers, and subject area experts invited to consult or take in the meeting
The text “widely reported need to make liturgical language more accessible to the faithful and more embodied in the diversity of cultures.” Episcopal conferences should be entrusted with a wider responsibility in this regard. Turning to the 23 autono-mous Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome, the report mentioned a proposal for the creation of a council connecting the heads of the Eastern Catholic Churches with the pope, as well as a “joint commission of Eastern and Latin theologians, historians and canonists” to address complex issues. A revision of the Code of Canon Law and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches is requested.
“The Holy Father has significantly in-creased the number of women in positions of responsibility in the Roman Curia,” it added. “The same should happen at other levels of the life of the Church. Canon law must be adapted accordingly.”
The text noted that many assembly mem-bers had highlighted the danger of “‘cleri-calizing’ the laity, perpetuates inequalities and divisions among the People of God.” The possibility should be considered of re-inserting priests who have left the ministry in pastoral services.

A German bishop issued a letter on Noevmebr 2 asking pastors in his diocese to bless same-sex couples.
Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiese-mann said in the Nov. 2 letter to priests, deacons, and lay pastoral workers that the blessings – whi-ch he also extended to remarried couples–could take place in chur-ches in the Diocese of Speyer.
“The ceremony must differ from a church wedding ceremony in terms of words and signs and should explicitly reinforce the love, commitment, and mutual responsibility in the couple’s re-lationship as an act of blessing,” he wrote in the 1,000-word letter.
Local Catholic media said that Wiesemann was the first German bishop to make such an appeal, though other prelates have stre-ssed previously that pastors will face no sanctions for blessing same-sex and remarried couples in their dioceses.
Wiesemann, who has led the diocese in southwest Germany since 2008, said he was issuing the invitation after 93% of parti-cipants in the country’s contro-versial “synodal way” endorsed a document calling for “blessing ceremonies for couples who love each other.”
The text called for the crea-tion of a “handout” for use in German dioceses that included “suggested forms for blessing celebrations for various couple situations (remarried couples, same-sex couples, couples after civil marriage).”

Pope Francis is continuing his efforts for peace in the Holy Land. As confirmed by the Holy See, on the afternoon of Sunday, Nov. 5, the Holy Father had a conversation with the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi.
The Vatican has limited itself to confirming that the call took place at the request of Raisi, who, according to a statement from the Iranian president’s office, thanked the Holy Father for his calls for peace and said that it is duty of followers of all Abraha-mic religions to “support the oppressed people of Palestine.”
Raisi asked the Holy Father to exert his influence in the West to end the attacks in Gaza, which he called “the greatest genocide of the century.”
He also urged Pope Francis to “correctly explain the position of the oppressor and the oppre-ssed” in the conflict.
In his Nov. 5 Angelus, Pope Francis renewed his call for a cease-fire and said he hoped that “avenues will be pursued so that an escalation of the conflict might be absolutely avoided, so that the wounded can be rescued and help might get to the population of Gaza where the humanitarian situation is extremely serious.”
He also called for the imme-diate release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, especially child-ren.
The phone call was in addition to the different conversations the pontiff has had with various lead-ers since Hamas terrorists atta-cked Israel on Oct. 7.

At age 66, Father Peter Adamski became a priest in the town of Stratford, Connecticut, at St. James Church. But his path to the priesthood was not your typical journey.
As a teenager, Adamski believed the Lord was calling him to be a priest. That quickly changed when one day on his college campus, at age 19, he laid eyes on Kathy, the woman who would become his wife of 40 years.
“I go up this set of stairs and I see this vision leaning against the wall,” Adamski told EWTN correspondent Colm Flynn in an interview for “EWTN News In Depth.”
It was love at first sight, Adamski said, and the two married less than two years later.
Adamski joined the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson at the age of 26 and quickly became a successful business-man.
One day, Kathy confronted him in his office: “She said, ‘Peter, you cannot serve both God and mammon and your corporate career is your mammon and you’-re jeopardizing this marriage.’”
Adamski took this as a wake-up call and began to focus more on his marriage. Soon after, he and his wife had a son, John. Everything seemed to be going perfectly for the family of three until they received unexpected news: Kathy was diagnosed with cancer and early-onset Alzhei-mer’s.
“I can still see us embracing on the sidewalk knowing what we were just told – there’s no cure for Alzheimer’s, it’s the long goodbye. And I knew that our vision of us growing old and stooped over and gray hair toge-ther wasn’t going to happen.”

Over the past 100 years, the number of Christians in Türkiye has fallen from 20% to 0.2% of the population. The systematic targeting of Turkish Christians and missionaries from abroad by the Turkish government has significantly contributed to this trend. Human rights experts hi-ghlighted the growing intole-rance against Christians in Türkiye at Europe’s largest human rights conference, which was hosted by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Warsaw, Poland on Oct. 5.
As the Islamisation of the country progre-sses, Open Doors reports that the pressure on the Christian community has increased massively since the coup attempt by a faction of the armed forces in 2016. There is arguably a dictatorial paranoia that sees an enemy in all foreign actors, manifesting in anti-Christian sentiment. Conspiracy theories often paint Christians as collaborators with foreign powers seeking to undermine Turkish identity. The govern-ment spends enormous sums of money to spread Islam at home and abroad through one of its largest ministries, the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs. Alongside these efforts, it has become increasingly wary of a small number of Christian missionaries residing in the country.

The new analysis of a study that claims to be the largest national survey of Catholic priests conducted in more than 50 years has found, among other thin-gs, that priests describing themselves as “progre-ssive” are practically go-ing “extinct” among U.S. seminary graduates, with the vast majority of young ordinands describing themselves as conservative and orthodox.
Conducted by The Catholic Project, a research group at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., the newest release focuses on polarization, generational dynamics, and the ongoing impact of the sexual abuse crisis.
Part 1 of the survey, released last October, found that despite rela-tively high levels of per-sonal well-being and ful-fillment among priests as a whole, a significant percentage of priests have issues with burnout, dis-trust in their bishop, and fears of being falsely accused of misconduct.
The new November report highlights “several themes which have emerged from closer analysis of the quantitative data, as well as careful study of the qualitative data collected from the one-on-one interviews with priests.” The study used survey responses from 3,516 priests across 191 dioceses and eparchies in the United States.

As the Church in the Arabian Peninsula begins its Holy Year for the 1,500th anniversary of the Martyrs of Arabia (523-2023), the second of two Holy Doors was opened at Mass on Thursday evening in St. Joseph’s Cathedral in the United Arab Emirates’ capital of Abu Dhabi.
The Apostolic Vicar of Southern Arabia, Bishop Paolo Martinelli, OFM Cap., presided over the Mass as part of the Extraordinary Jubilee proclaimed in the Apostolic Vicariates of Northern and Southern Arabia for the occasion.
During the Mass, Bishop Martinelli opened the Holy Door at the Cathedral, to which Pope Francis made a private visit du-ring his February 2019 visit to Abu Dhabi.
Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, Prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, pre-sent these days in Abu Dhabi for the Global Faith Leaders Summit in view of COP28, and the Apo-stolic Nuncio to the United Arab Emirates, Archbishop Christophe Zakhia El-Kassis, took part in the celebration.
The Apostolic Vicar of Nor-thern Arabia, Bishop Aldo Bera-rdi, delivered the homily, reca-lling the ancient roots of Chri-stianity in the region.
When modern Christians first came to the Gulf region, he said, they thought that Christianity arrived with them and the dis-covery of oil.
“Then one day, unexpected ly, archeologists found the rem-ains of monasteries, churches, and crosses in the rocks and the deserts,” said Bishop Berardi. “Therefore, we are not a new Church. We are the continuation of that Church.”
Though modern Christians cannot proselytize in the Gulf, he said, “we must live as witne-sses to Jesus every day: in our daily lives, our work, our fami-lies, our honesty, our consistency of life, and our relationships with others.”

Transsexual persons, even if they have undergone hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery, may receive the Sacrament of Baptism “if there are no situations in which there is a risk of generating public scandal or confusion among the faithful”. The children of homosexual couples should be baptized even if they are born from a surrogate mother, provided there is a well-founded hope that they will be educated in the Catholic faith.
These clarifications were issued on Wednesday in a response to questions (dubia) submitted to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) by Bishop José Negri of Santo Amaro, Brazil.
The document, signed by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandéz, the Prefect of the DDF, and approved by Pope Francis on 31 October, answered six questions concerning the possible participation of transsexual and homoaffective persons in the Sacraments of Baptism and Matrimony.
The answers “re-propose, in substance, the fundamental contents of what has already been affirmed in the past by the Dicastery concerning these matters.”
The DDF affirmed that transsexual persons, whether adults, children, or adolescents, can be baptized, provided they are “well-prepared and willing, and that there is no occasion of scandal.”

A new report from a Christian advocacy group says that Christianity continues to thrive and grow despite brutal repression and attempts by governments, groups, and individuals across the world to quash the faith. The 2023 “Persecutors of the Year” report was released this month by the advocacy group International Christian Concern (ICC).
According to the report, the Islamic Republic of Iran has “one of the fastest-growing churches in the world.”Christians currently make up only a small minority in Iran, numbering somewhere between 500,000 and 800,000, according to ICC’s report. Though the government, ruled by Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, enforces strict adherence to Sharia law, ICC’s report said that hundreds of thousands of Iranians “from all different kinds of walks of life” have converted to Christianity.
In China, the report said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “requires that citizens worship the state, co-opting every religious structure possible into a mouthpiece of CCP propaganda.”
Under the leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping, the penalties for living out one’s Christian faith have continued to increase. Amid the persecution, the report said that there are now 70 million to 100 million “underground Christians” who have refused to follow the CCP’s mandate to “worship the state,” choosing instead to risk their lives by following Christ.

Following the close of last month’s Synod of Bishops, a leading Latin American cardinal has signaled openness in some cases to ordaining women deacons and also called for swift justice in sexual abuse cases, including the potential dissolution of a lay community in his own country currently under Vatican investigation.
Cardinal Pedro Barreto made the comments in an Oct. 30 exclusive interview with Crux, prior to leaving for Rome’s Fiumicino airport to return to Peru following the close of the synod.
The Archbishop of Huancayo and President of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA), Barreto also spoke of the growing influence of Latin America in the Church and the fact that Catholicism’s centre of gravity has shifted from the west to the global south.
On the topic of women, one of the biggest themes of the pope’s Oct. 4-29 Synod of Bishops on Synodality and among the most divisive issues in the discussion’s final synthesis document, Barreto noted that throughout the Church’s history, “it is always women influenced by society’s machismo, they have been relegated.”
“Today in the Church, especially in Latin America, if women stopped participating, the Church would not exist,” he said, noting that women religious even in his own diocese often lead liturgies and other initiatives in areas that have no priests.
On the possibility of ordaining women as deacons, a major hot-button synod talking point, Barreto said, “There are some, not all, who are against the women’s diaconate.”
“Women do not demand that, but they can, in some cases, be given the possibility of that,” he said, noting that every paragraph in the final synthesis document was voted on and approved, including the ones that talked about the women’s diaconate.
“We can still continue reflecting, but the role of women in the Church and in society is being evaluated a lot,” he said.