(ZENIT News / Rome, 02.18.2024).- On February 17, Pope Francis ordered a specific collaboration between the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia and the General Secretariat of the Synod in view of the second part of the Synod on Synodality in October 2024.
More specifically, the Pontiff established that «the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia collaborate, «according to their respective specific competencies, in the activity of the General Secretariat of the Synod,» by forming study groups that will initiate, with a synodal method, the in-depth study of some of the themes that emerged from the First Session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. These study groups will be constituted by common agreement between the competent Dicasteries of the Roman Curia and the General Secretariat of the Synod, to which the coordination is entrusted».
In the document establishing these provisions, the Pope recalls that «The pastoral competencies carried out by [the Roman Curia] find their purpose and efficacy in serving episcopal collegiality and ecclesial communion in union with and under the guidance of the Bishop of Rome.» It also places in this context the task of the General Secretariat of the Synod, which is distinct from the Roman Curia, but which «specifically helps to promote in a synodal spirit the mutual relations of the Bishops and of the particular Churches over which they preside, among themselves and in communion with the Bishop of Rome in the one, catholic Church».
Already in a document of December 2023, entitled «Towards October 2024«, wrote from the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops:
«We wish to develop the work carried out in the First Session, which addressed issues of great importance in a synodal manner, recording convergences, indicating questions to be dealt with and formulating proposals. These are issues of great importance, some of which must be dealt with at the level of the whole Church and in collaboration with the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, such as, for example, the preliminary study in view of the updating of the CIC and the CCEO (Synthesis Report, chap. 1 letter r), of the Ratio fundamentalis on the formation of ordained ministers (ch. 11 letter j), of the document Mutuae relationes (ch. 10 letter g); or the deepening of theological and pastoral research on the diaconate and, more specifically, on the access of women to the diaconate (ch. 9 letter n), etc. As a result of the work of a synodal assembly, a list of these topics will be presented to the Holy Father. On those he indicates, groups of experts from all continents will be convoked to work, with the involvement of the competent Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, in an ecclesial dynamization coordinated by the General Secretariat of the Synod. At the Second Session, in October 2024, a report on the progress of this work will be presented.»
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