Around the world, Pope Francis’s Synod on Synodality is moving full steam ahead as bishops gather at the continental level to discuss the concerns and priorities of their local churches, ahead of a major gathering in Rome later this year.
Formally opened by Pope Francis in October 2021, the Synod of Bishops on Synodality is officially titled, “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission,” and is a multi-stage process that will culminate in two Rome-based gatherings in October 2023 and October 2024.
After an initial consultation with laypeople at the diocesan level, reports summarizing the conclusions were sent to national bishops’ conferences, and bishops are now discussing the contents of those reports in a continental synod phase that is set to close in March.
From Oct. 4-29, bishops and select delegates, including laypeople, will gather in Rome for the first of a two-part discussion, which will close with a similar gathering in October 2024. According to organizers, the exercise is aimed at making the church a more open and welcoming place, driven less by a clerical power-structure and more on collaborative leadership.

After the release of a group of Egyptian Christians abducted in Libya, a leading human rights organization said that “Christians from sub-Saharan Africa face a toxic mix of racism and religious hostility” in the North African country.
The six men, all from the village of Alharja South in the southern Egyptian region of Suhag, had travelled to Libya for work. They were illegally taken at a checkpoint on Feb. 6 and transported to an unknown destination. They were released on Feb. 18.
Reports say they were tortured and were treated even worse once their abductors discovered they were Christians.
In a report, Christian Solidarity Worldwide said they were held in a small, crowded room with an exposed toilet, and were only released after a ransom $15,000 was paid.
CSW has welcomed the release but insists that it has nothing to do with a willingness on the part of the Libyan government to show tolerance towards Christians, or foreign nationals.
“It’s important to note that the men were released following the payment of a ransom. However, we consider raising awareness of the case, an important part of our advocacy, alongside calling for the action that would prevent this from happening again to anyone else,” said Kiri Kankhwende, CSW’s press officer.
She noted that Libya has become “a divided and lawless failed state which remains unsafe for its own citizens, and even more unsafe for foreign nationals, who are viewed by criminal elements as a source of illicit income.
Kankhwende said the security situation in the country has led some western governments like the U.S. and the UK to advise their citizens against travelling to Libya “due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”

Pope Francis has unequivocally confirmed that bishops must obtain authorization from the Holy See before granting permission to celebrate the pre-Vatican II Mass in parish churches and before allowing priests ordained after July 16, 2021, to use the 1962 Roman Missal. The latest instruction also makes clear that bishops cannot take the law into their own hands and interpret in a different way the restrictions on the Latin Mass issued by the pope in 2021.
The rescript was publish-ed today, Feb. 21, following an audience that Pope Francis granted on Feb. 20 to Cardinal Arthur Roche, the prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, who signed the rescript.
In July 2021, Pope Francis promulgated his apostolic letter “Traditionis Custodes” (“Guardians of the Tradition”), declaring only the liturgical books promulgated after the Second Vatican Council to be “the unique expression of the ‘lex orandi’ (law of worship) of the Roman Rite,” restoring the obligation of priests to have their bishops’ permission to celebrate according to the “ex-traordinary” or pre-Vatican II Mass and ordering bishops not to establish any new groups or parishes in their dioceses devoted to the former liturgy.

Ukraine’s top Catholic prelate says the surprise visit of US President Joe Biden on Monday has given the country’s people new hope on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion.
Speaking via Zoom with a handful of Italian journalists, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said “the Russian army has literally sentenced us to death,” but that the many visits of heads of state to Kyiv in the past year, including that of Joe Biden, “gives us hope that this sentence will not be carried out.”
The solidarity shown by these visits, Shevchuk said, gives the Ukrainian people hope “that we will be able not only to survive but also to defend ourselves and build a free and democratic society.”
“A year ago, at this very moment, all diplomatic representatives were leaving Kyiv. The Americans themselves called on their fellow citizens to leave Ukrainian territory,” Shevchuk said, noting that when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, only two diplomatic representatives remained in Kyiv: The Vatican’s envoy, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, and the ambassador of Poland.
“All the others fled. A year later, not only has everyone returned, but the president of the United States has even arrived,” Shevchuk said, issuing a plea to the international community: “Don’t leave us alone, don’t abandon us.”

Pope Francis revealed a slightly wary take on papal resignations in a candid conversation with his fellow Jesuits during a recent trip to Africa, saying he believes the papacy is for life and that stepping down should not become a habit in Catholicism.
The pope was in Africa Jan. 31-Feb. 5, visiting both the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. He was originally supposed to make the trip last summer but was unable to do so due to his ongoing knee troubles.
During the trip, he met privately with Jesuits serving in both the DRC and South Sudan. In each meeting, he was asked about his thoughts on papal resignation and whether he was considering it himself, and in each meeting, he said no.
Speaking to 82 Jesuits gathered for his Feb. 2 meeting in Kinshasa, Francis said, as he has in past interviews, that he wrote a letter of resignation two months after his March 2013 election and gave it to his then-secretary of state, Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in case his health ever prevented him from exercising his office and he wasn’t fully conscious to resign in that moment.
“However, this does not at all mean that resigning popes should become, let’s say, a ‘fashion,’ a normal thing,” he said.
Pointing to his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who made history in 2013 when he became the first pope to resign the papacy in 600 years, Pope Francis said Benedict “had the courage to do it because he did not feel up to continuing due to his health.”
“I for the moment do not have that on my agenda,” he said, voicing his belief that “the pope’s ministry is ad vitam (for life). I see no reason why it should not be so.”
“Historical tradition is important. If, on the other hand, we are listening to the ‘chatter,’ well, then we should change popes every six months!” he said.
Francis said he also believes the appointment of the head of the Jesuit order, the Father General, should be for life. Traditonally a lifelong appointment, this has changed in recent years, with the past two Jesuit Father Generals stepping down voluntarily.
“On this I am ‘conservative.’ It has to be for life,” he said.
He reiterated the point on papal resignation to the Jesuits in South Sudan, saying the thought of resigning “has not crossed my mind,” despite previous statements that he would resign if he ever felt that it was the right decision.

Pope Francis said on February 5 he is planning to visit India next year and is studying a possible trip to Mongolia later in 2023 in what would be a first for a Pope.
The Pope outlined his upcoming travel schedule during his flight back to Rome from South Sudan, wire agency AP reported.
He confirmed that he would be in Lisbon, Portugal for World Youth Day the first week of August and would participate in a September 23 meeting of Mediterranean bishops in Marseille, France.
He said there was “the possibility” that he would fly from Marseille to Mongolia, which would be a first for a pope.
Looking further ahead, Francis said he thought he would visit India in 2024, after plans for a trip in 2017 fell apart.
Pope Francis spoke to reporters after a six-day visit to Congo and South Sudan, where he was joined in the South Sudanese capital, Juba, by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Rt. Rev. Iain Greenshields.
The Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian leaders made a novel joint visit to push South Sudan’s political leaders to make progress on implementing a stalled 2018 peace accord that ended a civil war following the country’s 2011 independence from Sudan.

Addressing the European assembly of the Synod on Synodality, Cardinal Mario Grech—the secretary-general of the Synod—has given a strong indication of the Vatican’s plans for the worldwide assembly.
In a homily preached during Mass at Saint Vitus cathedral in Prague on February 8, Cardinal Grech prayed that “our endeavour not become an exercise in exclusive distinction, between those who are in and those who are out.” Yet he also cautioned against a tendency to “blur the distinction between what is within the Catholic tradition and what is outside.”
Some commentators have read Cardinal Grech’s homily as a rebuke to the German bishops, whose “Synodal Path” calls for dramatic changes in Church teaching and discipline. But the cardinal does not call for reject-ion of those proposals. On the contrary he welcomes the tension between the radical proposals of liberal bishops and the conservative calls for clarity. He suggests that the tension will remain when the work of the Synod is done.
The German bishops and their liberal colleagues call for the development of an “inclusive” Church, which would downplay (if not eliminate) moral teachings that offend the sensibilities of the secularized Western world. Tra-dition-minded Catholics respond with a demand to clarify those teachings, to ensure that the Chu-rch does not stray from perenni-al truths. The cardinal, in his homily, nods to both sides of that dispute.
Cardinal Grech sends a reassuring message to conservative Catholics: “The Synod is not there to destroy distinctions, to destroy the Catholic identity.”

European Catholics debated on February 9 morning the contents of a final document that will influence the discussions of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican in the fall.
On the final day of public speeches in Prague on Feb. 9, the 200 delegates at the European Continental Assembly were asked if the assembly’s final document drafted by a six-member committee was faithful to what was discussed in the previous three days of the assembly.
Ukrainian Bishop Oleksandr Yazlovetskiy, a Latin auxiliary bishop of Kyiv, was one of the first to take the floor, raising an objection to the repeated use of the term LGBTQ on “every other page” in the document, suggesting instead that it would be better to cover the topic within a single paragraph.
Archbishop StanisBaw Gdecki objected to the framing of “conservative and liberal” when describing the Church, suggesting instead to clarify whether given statements agree or disagree with the Gospel.
The Polish prelate added that the document does not communicate the position of the Church in its references to “LGBT” per-sons.
Bishop Georg Bätzing, the president of the German bishops’ conference, said that the Church is not yet in a “new Pentecost” as the document claimed.
Archbishop Felix Gmür of Basel, Switzerland, noted that parts of the text seemed “too vague” and could be more clear, especially in underlining where tensions exist.

With all that has been said about the passing of Pope Benedict XVI, most of it neglects the larger historical context—his prediction of the end of our era and his vision for the one to follow it.
One must begin back in the decade following the horrors of World War I in April 1917. By then the Enlightenment Era’s victory for universal peace and prosperity was reckoned so successful as to justify a serious proposal to “outlaw war.” It resulted in a Kellogg-Briand Pact that was signed by all the world powers, including the US and Germany.
Over his lifetime, Ratzinger became a dominant force in the intellectual debate over the influence of progressive liberalism in the West and the world, notably debating with atheist philosophers like Jurgen Habermas with mutual concessions and respect. His life spanned the early optimism and dominance of Wilsonian idealism, Nazi rule and defeat in World War II, the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Soviet Union.
He rejoiced in the Cold War victory but did not see it as The End of History or believe that it produced a new man to populate it. To Ratzinger, 1991 was no more a final victory than it was 1917. Indeed, his magnum opus, a collection of articles written du-ring the 1990s until his papa-cy, Truth and Tolerance, predicted the end of the Enlightenment itself.
By the close of the 20th century, it had become clear to both the religious Ratzinger and secular Habermas that Western reason, science, democracy, and unbounded freedoms were failing. The Nazi and communist alternatives had fallen but the “feeling that democracy is still not the right form of freedom is fairly general” Ratzinger noted. Critics were raising valid questions about its legitimacy.
How free are elections? To what extent is the people’s will manipulated by publicity, that is by capital, by the agency of a few people who dominate public opinion? Is there not a new oligarchy of the people who decide what is modern and progressive, what somebody enlightened has to think? How fearsome this oligarchy is, the way they can publicly execute people, is well enough known. Anyone who gets in their way is an enemy of freedom because he is preventing freedom of expression.

Since its creation in the 16th century, this church has been an important cultural and intellectual resource for Ukrainian id-entity. Most Ukrainians regard themselves as Orthodox, not Catholic. But with anywhere from 4.5 million to 6.5 million members, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is the third-largest church in Ukraine, representing about 10% to 15% of the Ukrainian population.
Despite its relatively small size, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has, in the words of historian Kathryn David, “played an outsized role … in the creation of the Ukrainian nation.”
As a professor of religious studies who has spent three decades exploring the social and political role of religion in Eastern Europe, I am fascinated by the growing influence of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine.
As its name suggests, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has a complex heritage. It is a Ukrainian church consisting of Ukrainian parishioners and headquartered in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.