Pope Francis Opens a Big Vatican Meeting on the Church's Future and Says 'Everyone' is Welcome

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis said the Catholic Church was in need of repair to make it a place of welcome for “everyone, everyone, everyone,” as he opened a big meeting on the future of the faith that has sparked hope among progressives and alarm among conservatives.

Francis presided over a solemn Mass in St. Peter's Square to formally open the meeting. But he warned both camps in the church's culture wars to put their “human strategies, political calculations or ideological battles" aside and let the Holy Spirit guide debate.

Pope Francis presides over a mass concelebrated by the new cardinals for the start of the XVI General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, Oct.4, 2023. Pope Francis is convening a global gathering of bishops and laypeople to discuss the future of the Catholic Church, including some hot-button issues that have previously been considered off the table for discussion. Key agenda items include women's role in the church, welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics, and how bishops exercise authority. For the first time, women and laypeople can vote on specific proposals alongside bishops (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
“We're not here to create a parliament, but to walk together with the gaze of Jesus," he said.

Rarely in recent times has a Vatican gathering generated as much hope, hype and fear as this three-week, closed-door meeting, known as a synod. It won’t make any binding decisions and is only the first session of a two-year process. But it nevertheless has drawn an acute battle line in the church’s perennial left-right divide and marks a defining moment for Francis and his reform agenda.

Pope Francis presides a mass concelebrated by the new cardinals for the start of the XVI General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, Oct.4, 2023. Pope Francis is convening a global gathering of bishops and laypeople to discuss the future of the Catholic Church, including some hot-button issues that have previously been considered off the table for discussion. Key agenda items include women's role in the church, welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics, and how bishops exercise authority. For the first time, women and laypeople can vote on specific proposals alongside bishops (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

On the table are calls to take concrete steps to elevate more women to decision-making roles in the church, including as deacons, and for ordinary Catholic faithful to have more of a say in church governance.

Also under consideration are ways to better welcome of LGBTQ+ Catholics and others who have been marginalized by the church, and for new accountability measures to check how bishops exercise their authority to prevent abuses.

Even before it started, the gathering was historic because Francis decided to let women and laypeople vote alongside bishops in any final document produced. While fewer than a quarter of the 365 voting members are non-bishops, the reform is a radical shift away from a hierarchy-focused Synod of Bishops and evidence of Francis’ belief that the church is more about its flock than its shepherds.

Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference Communication Officer Sheila Pires poses for a portrait at The Vatican, Friday, Sept. 29, 2023. Pires has been invited to take part in the next synod of bishops starting Oct. 4. “I think the church has just come to a point of realization that the church belongs to all of us, to all the baptized,” she says. Of the 365 voting members, only 54 are women and organizers insist the aim is to reach a consensus, not tally votes like a parliament. But the voting reform is nevertheless significant, tangible evidence of Francis’ vision of the Catholic Church as being more about its flock than its shepherds. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)
“It’s a watershed moment,” said JoAnn Lopez, an Indian-born lay minister who helped organize two years of consultations prior to the meeting at parishes where she has worked in Seattle and Toronto.

“This is the first time that women have a very qualitatively different voice at the table, and the opportunity to vote in decision-making is huge,” she said.

In his homily, Francis recalled that his namesake St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is celebrated Wednesday, also faced divisions and tensions in his lifetime and responded with prayer, charity, humility and unity when he was told: “Go and rebuild my church."

“Let us do the same!” Francis said. “And if God’s holy people with their shepherds from all over the world have expectations, hopes and even some fears about the synod we are beginning, let us continue to remember that it is not a political gathering, but a convocation in the spirit; not a polarized parliament, but a place of grace and communion.”

Women hold up a banner during a protest at St Angel Castle by WOC, Women Ordination Conference requesting the ordination of women to the priesthood, as Pope Francis begins a synod presiding over a mass in St. Peter’s Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023. Pope Francis has opened a big meeting on the future of the Catholic Church. (Cecilia Fabiano /LaPresse via AP)
Before the opening Mass got under way, advocates for women priests unfurled a giant purple banner at a piazza nearby reading “Ordain Women.”

Women have long complained they are treated as second-class citizens in the church, barred from the priesthood and highest ranks of power yet responsible for the lion’s share of church work — teaching in Catholic schools, running Catholic hospitals and passing the faith down to next generations.

They have long demanded a greater say in church governance, at the very least with voting rights at the periodic synods at the Vatican but also the right to preach at Mass and be ordained as priests or deacons.

Lopez, 34, and other women are particularly excited about the potential that the synod might in some way endorse allowing women to be ordained as deacons, a ministry that is currently limited to men.

For years supporters of female deacons have argued that women in the early church served as deacons and that restoring the ministry would both serve the church and recognize the gifts that women bring to it.

Francis has convened two study commissions to research the issue and was asked to consider it at a previous synod on the Amazon, but he has so far refused to make any change.

In his homily opening the synod, Francis said such “preconceived” ideas had no place in the gathering. But repeating his new mantra about the church as a place of welcome, he said “tutti, tutti, tutti” must be allowed in: Everyone, everyone, everyone.

In such difficult times, he said, there is a temptation to be “a rigid church, which arms itself against the world and looks backward; a lukewarm church, which surrenders to the fashions of the world; a tired Church, turned in on itself.”

He offered an alternate vision: “A church that is united and fraternal, that listens and dialogues; a church that blesses and encourages, that helps those who seek the Lord, that lovingly stirs up the indifferent, that opens paths in order to draw people into the beauty of faith. A church that has God at its center and, therefore, is not divided internally and is never harsh externally.”

The potential that this synod process could lead to real change on previously taboo topics has given hope to many women and progressive Catholics and sparked alarm from conservatives who have warned its call for radical inclusion of LGBTQ+ people could lead to schism.

They have written books, held conferences and taken to social media claiming that Francis’ reforms are sowing confusion, undermining the true nature of the church and all it has taught over two millennia. Among the most vocal are conservatives in the U.S.

On the eve of the meeting, one of the synod’s most outspoken critics, American Cardinal Raymond Burke, delivered a stinging rebuke of Francis’ vision of “synodality” as well as his overall reform project for the church.

“It’s unfortunately very clear that the invocation of the Holy Spirit by some has the aim of bringing forward an agenda that is more political and human than ecclesial and divine,” Burke told a conference entitled “The Synodal Babel.”

He blasted even the term “synodal” as having no clearly defined meaning and said its underlying attempt to shift authority away from the hierarchy “risks the very identity of the church.”

In the audience was Cardinal Robert Sarah, who along with Burke and three other cardinals had formally challenged Francis to affirm church teaching on homosexuality and women’s ordination before the synod.

In an exchange of letters made public Monday, Francis didn’t bite and instead said the cardinals shouldn’t be afraid of questions that are posed by a changing world. Asked specifically about church blessings for same-sex unions, Francis suggested they could be allowed as long as such benedictions aren’t confused with sacramental marriage.

Associated Press journalist Trisha Thomas contributed to this report.