The more than 250 Catholic bishops from around the world meeting at the Vatican in October missed an opportunity to confront the global sex abuse crisis, said Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia.

“I wish that we had spent more time not only talking about (the crisis) but apologizing to people for it,” said Chaput, one of the delegates elected by the U.S. bishops to participate in the Synod of Bishops on young people, the faith and vocational discernment.

The “resistance (of) some bishops” meant the abuse crisis was largely absent from the discussions, he told Catholic News Service on Oct. 25. “Some say that (sex abuse) really is an issue of the Western world.”

But “it seems to me that it’s an issue of human nature, and it’s very important for the Church to talk about it,” said the archbishop, who in August had written to Pope Francis asking him to postpone the Synod in the wake of the scandal. Chaput was a member of the Synod’s ordinary council, which prepared the October assembly.

Judging from the discussion and the first draft of the meeting’s final document – a draft he said could be amended significantly – Chaput said there also were other topics on which the Synod could have been stronger.

“There was very little discussion of human sexuality at all. But anybody who sits in the confessional knows that that’s an issue,” he said, especially “for young people who are trying to learn how to be human and how to be Christian in a world that really promotes a wrong understanding of human sexuality.” “It’s a natural desire for men and women to be married – it’s not good for man to be alone, we have the Lord God’s word on that – so that’s a common issue for young adults everywhere,” but the issue of marriage preparation got little attention at the Synod, he said.
“That probably should have been 98% of what we did because that’s 98 percent of what the issues are for young people, but we didn’t spend much time on it at all,” he said.

In his own address to the Synod, Chaput asked that people not be identified by sexual orientation in the Synod document, for instance by referring to “LGBTQ Catholics,” because the Church does not put people into categories like that.

The archbishop said it is a “sadness” for him when “people who have same-sex attraction talk about themselves” only or primarily by referring to their sexual orientation.

Fr Marco Ribolini is a priest with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) and pastor in Ban Thoet Thai, a remote village in the Diocese of Chiang Rai, north-western Thailand.

For him, the journey from evangelisation to true conversion among tribal people “is long and lasts several generations since Christian values are revolutionary for both religious and social life.”

Local Catholics belong to various ethnic minorities (Akha, Lana, Lahu, Isan, Thaiyai, Kachin), who live in the mountain and rural areas amid poverty as well as social and geographical marginalisation. The four PIME missions in the north of the country – Fang, Ban Thoet Thai, Mae Suay and Ngao – have some hostels to meet the residential and education needs of young people from poor families.

“Ours is still a ‘catechumenal’ church,” Fr Ribolini said. It is based on “first evangelisation and conversions. The geography is complex since Christians live in villages in the forests and far from each other.”

The mission in Ban Thoet Thai alone caters to 27 settlements and offers young people various recreational activities, together with moments of prayer and catechism lessons. This is the case of the ‘Sacraments camp’ that started today involving some 70 kids aged 7 to 12 for four days.

“Through this initiative, we will prepare the children for the sacraments of Christian initiation: baptism, confirmation and the eucharist,” the missionary explained.

“Praying never fails in PIME hostels,” he added. But the mission also takes care of families, who have the opportunity to study catechesis through various programmes.

Sunday Mass was not delivered on October 21 in an Irish village for the first time in 1,500 years due to the shortage of Catholic priests.

The Church of the Sacred Heart, in Boho, Co. Fermanagh, stands on the site of an early Christian monastery dating back to the sixth century.

But the service was cancelled, as the local Diocese have been forced to alternate Mass between the church in Boho and another in Monea, a neighbouring rural village, every week.

Parishioners were not consulted on the changes and many fear if will threaten people’s local identity. One man in his 90s, who has walked to church every Sunday in Boho, will now have to find a lift in order to go to Mass at another church. The situation is expected to get worse, local clergymen revealed, as the number of priests being ordained is failing to grow. Monsignor McGuiness, who holds a senior post in the Catholic Church, said that the situation had become critical and the church had to deal with the reality that the number of priests will reduce still further.

Synodality is about more than just bishops participating in the governance of the church; it encourages the involvement of all the faithful in a spirit of collaboration, said Archbishop Hector Miguel CabrejosVidarte of Trujillo, Peru.

During an Oct. 25 briefing with journalists, Archbishop Cabrejos said that “synodality” was a theme that was heavily discussed throughout the Synod of Bishops.

Synodality, he said, is more than just a word; it’s a way of life for the church that “promotes everyone’s participation.”

“When I say everyone, I don’t just mean the church as in the bishops, priests. No! It is also the laity and the faithful at all levels. And all of us bishops are called — and this is part of that synodality — to make colla- boration grow,” Archbishop Cabrejos said.

“The church,” he added, “is not having a Synod for youth, but with youth.” The archbishop, who also serves as president of the Peruvian bishops’ conference, explained that synodality involves the entire church “walking together” not only with young people who are in the church but “also with those who are far, with nonbelievers.” “The word that best describes synodality is walking; walking together not just as a church, not just as a youth group, not just as a priest, not just as a religious congregation for men and women or a lay group. It is walking together. And I think the clear image is that we bishops are called” to foster growth, participation and synodality.

Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna was asked on Oct. 26 about the difference between “synodality” and the “collegiality” the Second Vatican Council saw a need to strengthen.

Collegiality involves all the bishops together and with the Pope exercising their leadership as successors of the group of Twelve Apostles chosen by Jesus, he said. “Synodality is a much wider notion,” one that recognizes that each Christian, by virtue of his or her baptism, has something to contribute to the life and mission of the church.

The precipitous decline in the number of women in religious life and what it means to the Church has people thinking about how to prepare for the future.

Their actions stem from data gathered by the National Religious Retirement Office at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that projects an estimated 300 women’s religious institutes will likely phase out of existence in the next decade.

The estimate is fuelled by the fact that the overall number of women religious has declined by 75% since 1965 with no change in the trend expected.

Bishops, women religious, canon lawyers and others discussed the future of religious life in a two-day workshop on Sept. 25-26 in Oakbrook, Illinois, outside of Chicago.

The workshop, “Fidelity to the Journey: Together in Communion,” was sponsored by the Resource Centre for Religious Institutes under a grant from the GHR Foundation.

The number of women religious in the United States has declined from a peak of 181,421 in 1965 to 47,160 in 2016, National Religious Retirement Office statistics show. About 77 percent of women religious are older than 70.

As many as 300 of the 420 religious institutes in the United States are in their last decades of existence because of aging membership and declining vocations, officials said.

Every year, just in time for World Mission Day, Agenzia Fides releases a report which takes stock of the world’s population of Catholics. This year, in celebration of their 92nd WMD, they announced that the Church had grown by 14 million faithful since 2015. The numbers are taken from the “Church’s Book of Statistics,” which examines members of the church, church structures, healthcare, welfare, and education. In 2016, the world population stood at around 7.35 billion people, which was an increase of about 103 million from the previous year. Of the entire human population, nearly 1.3 billion people recognize themselves as Catholic, which is nearly 18% of the world’s population. Although the number of new Catholics increased by over 14 million, due to death or conversion, the worldwide percentage of Catholics dropped by 0.05%.

Increases in the Catholic population were observed in all continents, except for Europe, which for the third consecutive year dropped by about 240,000. The continent which demonstrated the greatest Catholic growth was Africa, with over six million new Catholics in 2016. This year, the number of Catholics per priest increased by 39 units, to an average of 3,130. While this suggests the church is still in great need of vocations, this number increased in every continent besides Asia. The total number of priests in the world dropped by 687 and totals about 415,000. The total number of bishops increased world wide by 49, raising the total of Catholic bishops to 5,353. Members of both male and female secular institutes both saw decreases across the world in 2016. The only exception to this was in Africa, where they saw an increase in members of female secular institutes. This was, however, the only upward trend in this category.

The church needs to further integrate women into ecclesial life to confront the problems of clericalism and an exaggerated sense of masculinity, a Vatican official told the Synod of Bishops.

In his address to the Synod members on Oct. 18, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, said he agreed with the working document’s assertion that there sometimes is “an ecclesial inability to recognize, welcome and foster the creativity of the ‘feminine genius.’ “

“The participation of authoritative women in the discussion has shown us that it is possible and necessary to accelerate the processes of struggle against the ‘machista’ culture and clericalism, to develop respect for women and the recognition of their charisms as well as their equal integration in the life of society and the church,” the cardinal said.

The importance of women, as well as a proposed Synod of Bishops “on the theme of the woman in the life and mission of the church,” were discussed in-depth during the March 6- 9 plenary meeting of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, the cardinal recalled.

No one is excluded from the love of God or from being welcomed into the Catholic Church, but God’s love and the church’s welcome also come with a call to conversion, said the English- language groups at the Synod of Bishops. Young people need to know “the church’s beautiful, yet challenging, vision, teaching and anthropology of the body, sexuality, love and life, marriage and chastity,” said the English-A group. “At the same time, we restate the church’s opposition to discrimination against any person or group, and her insistence that God loves every young person, and so does the church,” the group said in its report.

The reports, published by the Vatican on Oct. 20, were the result of reflections in the small groups — divided by language — on the final chapter of the Synod working document, which dealt with “pastoral and missionary conversion.” Most of the 14 working groups called for further local and national dialogue with young people on what they need from the Catholic Church and what they can offer the church.

Most also called for a greater involvement of women in the life of the church, including in the training of priests, and many acknowledged how the sexual abuse scandal undermines the church’s credibility.