By Robert Messer and Christoph Driessen, dpa
ROME – Pope Francis suggested at the start of the World Synod in Rome that there will not be major concrete changes to the Catholic Church decided during the meeting, dampening hopes among liberals hoping for sweeping reforms.
“We are not here to advance a parliamentary session or a reform plan,” the 86-year-old pope made clear on Wednesday at the start of the church conference. He gave his remarks in a homily before some 25,000 faithful in St Peter’s Square in Rome.
Some Catholics had hoped for changes to the Catholic Church’s position on social issues, especially the treatment of homosexuals or the position of women in the clergy.
The World Synod is viewed as one of Pope Francis’ most important reform projects during his tenure. The pontiff himself has presented the synod as a major change in how decisions are made within the Catholic Church.
About 365 voting members will take part from October 4 to 29. The vast majority are bishops, although participants also include other clergy and as well as lay people, the term for members of the church who are not clergy.
For the first time in the history of the Catholic Church, 54 women were admitted as voting members for the synod. Criticism of Francis’ World Synod has already been voiced from both sides of the Catholic spectrum.
Reformers, for example, come into the meeting worried that the World Synod will not bring any tangible changes and criticized a working paper circulated ahead of the meeting as too vague.
Conservatives, on the other hand, largely believe the process has gone too far. Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a former high-ranking Vatican official and German bishop who is a leading conservative voice in the church, said there was a danger that the synod would lose sight of what is actually Catholic and slide into a bland general social critiques “that could come from the United Nations or another social-welfare organization.”
In view of such disputes, the pope admonished all participants at the opening service on Wednesday that neither ideological battles nor political considerations should play a role in the assembly. He said he wanted participants in the synod to present a picture of a church that is “not divided on the inside and never harsh on the outside.”
Limburg Bishop Georg Bätzing, the chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference and an advocate of wide-reaching reforms, told dpa that he remained optimistic before the start of the synod’s first general session.
Germany’s Catholics are seen as a particularly liberal faction within the global church. German bishops have clashed with the Vatican over social issues including the acceptance of homosexuality, which church doctrine regards as immoral.
German Catholics have also moved forward with a reform process that would include non-clergy in church decision-making bodies. Bätzing told dpa that he was “convinced that all topics will be put on the table,” adding that issues important to German Catholics play an important role in other countries as well.
“The questions on reforms have been brought forward by many countries in advance,” Bätzing said. The president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), Irme Stetter-Karp, called for “courageous debates” at the synod.
But Annette Schavan, a German politician who previously served as Germany’s ambassador to the Vatican, said that German Catholics need to come to terms with the fact that Pope Francis is setting his own priorities.
Schavan told the German newspaper Die Zeit that Francis wants to move away from a national to a global perspective and Europeans are not at the centre of his thinking: “He is not flying to Berlin, Paris, Madrid, but to the periphery.”
