Pope Says He Won’t Write Exhortation, Will Let Final Document Stand VATICAN CITY (CNS) – After members of the Synod of Bishops approved their final document, Pope Francis announced that he would not write the customary post-synodal apostolic exhortation but would offer the final document to the entire Church to implement. “There are already highly concrete indications in the document that can be a guide for the mission of the churches in the different continents and contexts,” Pope Francis told synod members on the closing day of the synod, Saturday, October 26. “For that reason, I do not intend to publish an apostolic exhortation. What we have approved is enough,” he said. Instead, he ordered the publication of the synod’s final document. Pope Francis and members of the Synod of Bishops on synodality pose for a photo after the synod’s final working session Oct. 26, 2024, in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Vatican Media) With the exceptions of the first synods convoked by Pope St. Paul VI in 1967 and 1971, all ordinary assemblies of the Synod of Bishops have been followed by an exhortation on the synod’s themes and discussions by the pope. Members of the synod on synodality, including Bishop Rhoades, after meeting for a month in 2023 and again from October 2-26, approved their final document by voting on each of the 155 paragraphs. All paragraphs passed with the approval of more than two-thirds of the members present and voting. The document presented synodality as a style of Christian life and ministry based on the “equal dignity of all the baptized” and a recognition that they all have something to offer to the mission of proclaiming salvation in Christ. The practical suggestions included making pastoral councils mandatory for every parish and ensuring the bodies are truly representative of the parish members, recognizing the contributions of women to the life and ministry of the Church, and hiring more women and laymen to teach in seminaries. The 10 study groups the pope set up in the spring to research some of the more complicated issues raised by the synod – women’s ministry, seminary education, relations between bishops and religious communities, the role of nuncios, and others – will continue to work before offering him proposals next year, the pope said. “Time is needed to arrive at choices that involve the whole Church.” However, he promised that “this is not the classical way of postponing decisions indefinitely.” Instead, he told synod members, it “corresponds to the synodal style with which even the Petrine ministry is to be exercised: listening, convening, discerning, deciding, and evaluating. And in these steps, pauses, silences, prayer are necessary. It is a style that we are learning together, little by little.” Pope Francis celebrates the closing Mass for the Synod of Bishops on synodality in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Oct. 27, 2024. The newly restored 17th-century canopy is seen standing over the basilica’s main altar. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez) Much of the multi-year process for the synod on synodality, the pope said, involved listening sessions on a parish, diocesan, national, and continental level and included helping synod members themselves learn to listen to one another respectfully and listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit in those conversations. The final document “is a triple gift,” he said, one given to him first of all. “The bishop of Rome, I often remind myself, needs to practice listening and wants to practice listening so as to respond each day to the words of the Lord, ‘Confirm your brothers and sisters in the faith. Feed my sheep.’” The task of the pope, he said, “is to safeguard and promote – as St. Basil teaches us – the harmony that the Spirit continues to spread in God’s Church, in relations among the churches, despite all the struggles, tensions, and divisions that mark its journey toward the full manifestation of the Kingdom of God, which the vision of the prophet Isaiah invites us to imagine as a banquet prepared by God for all peoples – all, with the hope that no one is missing.” Pope Francis repeated the phrase that has become a refrain since he first said it at World Youth Day in Portugal in 2023: “Everyone, everyone, everyone! No one excluded, everyone.” Harmony is the goal, he said, not uniformity. It is a sign of the Holy Spirit, just as it was on Pentecost when people of different nations heard the disciples proclaiming the wondrous works of God in their own languages. The Church, the pope said, is “a sign and instrument of how God has already set the table and is waiting. His grace, through the Spirit, whispers words of love into the heart of each person. It is given to us to amplify the voice of this whisper, without hindering it; to open doors, without erecting walls.” “How bad it is when women and men of the Church erect walls,” he said. The Gospel is for “everyone, everyone, everyone! We must not behave as if we were dispensers of grace who appropriate the treasure and tie the hands of the merciful God.” Pope Francis celebrates the closing Mass for the Synod of Bishops on synodality in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Oct. 27, 2024. The newly restored 17th-century canopy is seen standing over the basilica’s main altar. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez) During his homily at the closing Mass of the synod on Sunday, October 27, in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis said that the Church cannot risk becoming “static” but must continue as a “missionary Church that walks with her Lord through the streets of the world.” “We cannot remain inert before the questions raised by the women and men of today, before the challenges of our time, the urgency of evangelization, and the many wounds that afflict humanity,” the pope said. “A sedentary Church, that inadvertently withdraws from life and confines itself to the margins of reality, is a Church that risks remaining blind and becoming comfortable with its own unease,” he said. In his homily, the pope called on the Church not to remain in a state of “blindness” to the issues in the Church and the world, a blindness that can take the form of embracing worldliness, placing a premium on comfort, or having a closed heart. The Church must listen to men and women “who wish to discover the joy of the Gospel,” he said, but it also must listen to “those who have turned away” from faith and to “the silent cry of those who are indifferent,” as well as the poor, marginalized, and desperate. “We do not need a sedentary and defeatist Church,” he said, “but a Church that hears the cry of the world and – I want to say it, maybe someone will be scandalized – a Church that gets its hands dirty to serve the Lord.” Reflecting on the day’s Gospel reading from St. Mark in which a blind man hears Jesus pass by, asks for healing, regains his sight, and then follows Him, the pope stressed that following God on the synodal path entails cultivating the capacity to hear the Lord pass by and the confidence to follow in His footsteps. “We follow the Lord along the way, we do not follow Him closed in our communities, we do not follow Him in the labyrinths of our ideas,” he said. “Let us remember never to walk alone or according to worldly criteria, but instead to journey together, behind Him and alongside Him.” The post Synod Comes to a Close – with a Surprise Ending appeared first on Today's Catholic.