With the document Towards October 2024 sent last December to all the bishops of the world, the General Secretariat of the Synod asked the local churches and groups of Churches to deepen some aspects of the Synthesis Report that are fundamental to the theme of the Synod, starting from a guiding question of the entire synodal process: ‘HOW to be a synodal Church in mission?’ During these months, the individual local Churches have carried out their work by sending their contribution through the Bishops’ Conferences, the Eastern Catholic Churches and the International Reunions of Bishops’ Conferences.
“I am particularly impressed to see the involvement of the entire church community in this long process of discernment”, says Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the General Secretariat of the Synod. “In addition to the reflections arising from the Synthesis Report of the First Session, the material received often adds real testimonies on how the particular churches not only understand synodality, but also how they are already putting this style into practice. The synodal Church is not a dream to be realised, but already a living reality that generates creativity and new relational models within the same local community or between different churches or church groupings’.
From Tuesday, 4 June 2024, the group of theologians, experts in various disciplines (dogmatic theology, ecclesiology, pastoral theology, canon law, etc.), will analyse all this material. ‘We are not leaving anything to chance. Each document is to be carefully read with the aim that at the end of this meeting, the group will present a text that reflects the work, questions and insights received from the grassroots” says Cardinal Grech.

The suspect, a former employee of the Fabbrica di San Pietro – the office responsible for the basilica’s upkeep – reportedly attempted to sell an 18-page manuscript, which had been missing from its archives, back to the basilica. The Italian newspaper Domani first reported the arrest on June 6, and the Vatican prosecutor’s office later confirmed it.
Though it is not clear where the manuscript was obtained, Domani reported that the suspect was arrested on May 27 after a fabricated transaction in which Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, arch-priest of St Peter’s Basilica, ex-changed a check for 120,000 euros (about $195,000) for the manuscript. Upon leaving the meeting with the cardinal, the suspect was taken into custody, interrogated and arrested.
According to Vatican News, the manuscript describes specifications for gilding the friezes on the baldachin, or canopy, that towers over the main altar of St Peter’s Basilica; the baldachin was designed and constructed by Bernini in the early 17th century. The manuscript reappeared in 2021 when a photocopy of it was used in a book on Bernini. The suspect was the editor of the volume and after its publication began negotiations with the basilica to sell the manuscript. Alessandro Diddi, the Vatican’s chief prosecutor, is expected to reach a decision about the indictment this week.

Pope Francis urged people to reflect on whether they are sacrificing their serenity and freedom to be enslaved by money, power, and pleasure. Speaking in his Angelus address on June 9, the pope asked people to contemplate the temptations that can imprison us and the freedom found in Christ.
“If we let ourselves be conditioned by the quest for pleasure, power, money, or consensus, we become slaves to these things,” he said. “If instead we allow God’s freely-given love to fill us and expand our heart, and if we let it overflow spontaneously by giving it back to others with our whole selves without fear, calculation, or conditioning, then we grow in freedom and spread its good fragrance around us in our homes, in our families, and in our communities.”
In his speech from the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the pope highlighted the many ways in which “Jesus was a free man.” Jesus was not enslaved by wealth but embraced “a poor life full of uncertainties, freely taking care of the sick and whoever came to ask him for help, without ever asking for anything in return.”
“He was free with regard to power,” Francis added. “Indeed, despite calling many to follow him, he never obliged anyone to do so, nor did he ever seek out the support of the powerful but always took the side of the least, teaching his disciples to do like-wise.” The Lord was also free from the need “for fame and approval, and for this reason, he never gave up speaking the truth,” he said. Pope Francis underlined that Jesus never gave up speaking the truth “even at the cost of not being understood or becoming unpopular – even to the point of dying on the cross.”

The Vicar General of the Diocese of Kafanchan, Ni-geria, has decried the kidna-pping of yet another priest in the area.” “While we pray for the safe release of Father Ukeh,” Fr Emmanuel Kazah Faweh said, “we condemn the incessant kidnappings for ransom of innocent and defenceless citizens of our parishes.” Father Gabriel Ukeh was kidnapped by armed men who broke into the rectory of St Thomas Church in northwestern Nigeria in the early hours of Sunday, 9 June.
Kidnappings are rampant throughout Nigeria, with bandits and insurgents taking people captive for hefty ransoms, but also for political or ideological reasons. More than 4,000 kidnappings have occurred since May 2023. Earlier this year, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization issued a statement denouncing the wave of kidnappings and expressing its “deepest and heartfelt solidarity” with the Nigerian people in the face of the crisis.

After being forced to leave their homes in the Iraqi city of Mosul because of religious extre-mism and violence ten years ago, very few Christian families have returned home. According to Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul, Amel Shimon Nona, the majority of the 1,200 Christian families had left the city of Mosul due to the violence carried out by the so-called Islamic State (IS).
In an interview with the Vatican’s Fides news agency, the Archbishop said he and his priests sought refuge in the villages of the Nineveh Plain, such as Kra-mles and Tilkif, during the height of the war. “Our church, dedicat-ed to the Holy Spirit, was looted by gangs of thieves while the city was being taken over by IS. How-ever, the Muslim families living nearby called the Islamist mili-tiamen, who intervened and put an end to the looting,” said Abp Nona. Christians began departing in droves after IS “marked” their homes for expropriation. Two nuns and three teenagers were tempo-rarily kidnapped by the jihadists. Then, in January 2015, the soldiers of IS expelled from Mosul ten elderly Chaldean and Syrian Ca-tholic Christians after they refused to renounce Christianity and con-vert to Islam.

“The adoption of specialized software in our parishes is a crucial step toward a more efficient and connected Church for the faithful in the digital age, allowing us to modernize our administrative processes and giving us the opportunity to offer better service to our communities in the country,” according to Bishop Coter, Apostolic Administrator of Reyes.
In this way, parishioners will be able to obtain any certificates from their parishes, saving time and money. The update was released by the Bolivian Bishops’ Conference, which, in collaboration with Ecclesiared, a management software, decided to launch this digitization plan to help dioceses and parishes use digital technologies as tools for their pastoral works and initiatives.
This enterprise will not only help the Church adapt to the digital times, but also protect and preserve the rich heritage of the Church in Bolivia by making digital copies of parish archives. The digitization process will begin in the Vicariate of Pando and the Vicariate of Reyes, gradually extending to the dioceses of San Ignacio de Velasco and the rest of the entire Church in Bolivia.