The Final Document, adopted on October 26 after each of its 155 paragraphs were approved, has been published, and will not become the basis of an Exhortation by the Pope, who has decided that it should be released immediately in order to inspire the life of the Church.
“The synodal process does not conclude with the end of the current Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, but it also includes the implementation phase” (9), involving all in the “daily journey with a synodal methodology of consultation and discernment, identifying concrete ways and formation pathways to bring about a tangible synodal conversion in the various ecclesial contexts” (9).
In particular, the Document challenges Bishops on their commitment to transparency and accountability, while noting, with Cardinal Victor Fernandez, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, that work continues to provide women greater roles and greater power within the Church.
Two key words that emerge from the text permeated by the perspective and proposal of conversion are “relationships”, a way of being Church; and “bonds”, marked by the “exchange of gifts” between the Churches lived dynamically and, therefore, converting processes. It is precisely the local Churches that are at the centre in the missionary horizon, which is the foundation of the experience of plurality of synodality, with all the structures at the service of mission, with the laity increasingly fulfilling their role as subjects, or protagonists, of the process.
In this perspective, the Final Document emphasizes the concrete reality of being rooted in a “place”. Notably, the Synod Fathers and Mothers propose that the Dicasteries of the Holy See initiate substantive consultations “before publishing important normative documents” (135).