It underlines that Dioceses should focus on “maximum inclusion and participation” among baptized Catholics in the Diocesan Synod process.
The preparatory document has been released for a period of “pre-Synodal discernment” that will influence a second draft of the text to be published before June 2023.
According to the Vatican, the preparatory document is “a tool to facilitate the first phase of listening to and consulting the People of God in the particular Churches” for the Diocesan phase of the Synod.
One objective of the Synod on Synodality, according to the preparatory document, is to encourage a participative and inclusive process that offers everyone, especially those who for various reasons find themselves on the margins, the opportunity to express themselves and to be heard in order to contribute to the edification of the people of God.
In his October 8 Pastoral letter, Cardinal Piat notes that “the originality of this Synod comes above all from the subject it will address. It does not deal with specific themes like the previous Synods on the Family or on Youth.”
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“This time, it is a question of questioning ourselves on how we are to journey together in the exercise of the mission entrusted to us,” the 80-year-old Cardinal adds.
The Synod, Cardinal Piat continues, “is the joyful step of a Church that goes out to meet the people in whose midst it lives, to listen to their joys and sorrows and to share the Good News with them.”
“We are a church where many people are already involved. It is fortunate that this is the case. But through this Synod, the Church invites us to go further in this same direction,” the Mauritian Cardinal says in his two-page pastoral letter.
He urges the people of God in Mauritius to take “this opportunity to enter into this joyful journey where some are already on their way.”
“Let us listen to one another, and together let us listen to the Spirit who blows where he wills. He will open new horizons bathed in rainbows, symbols of the hope that allows us to move forward without ever becoming discouraged,” Cardinal Piat says in the Pastoral letter obtained by ACI Africa.