Archbishop Hebda: Archdiocesan Synod can shape response to Vatican Synod

Archbishop Bernard Hebda asked for prayers for a Vatican Synod process that launched Oct. 10, as well as the 2022 Archdiocesan Synod, at a 5 p.m. Mass Oct. 17 at the Cathedral of St. Paul.

The two synods — one worldwide, the other local — are distinct from one another, but both call the people of God to “journey together,” he said.

“(Pope Francis) wants to make sure that all of us take responsibility for the gifts that we’ve been given by the Holy Spirit, and that we together are able to, to really put the Church on its right path,” Archbishop Hebda said in his homily of the Vatican synod, slated to culminate in a meeting of the bishops from around the world in 2023.

Catholics in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis have been engaged in the local Synod since 2019, when Archbishop Hebda led 30 Prayer and Listening Events around the archdiocese. With data gathered from those listening sessions, he discerned three focus areas for the local Church: individual discipleship, parish evangelization, and the faith of youth and young adults. Those three topics have been the subject of a series of six Synod Small Groups that have been meeting this fall in parishes. Ideas collected from the small groups will inform deanery-based discussions in early 2022, and then the Synod Assembly, a three-day meeting planned for June 3-5 in St. Paul. From there, Archbishop Hebda will develop a pastoral letter and pastoral plan for the future in the archdiocese.

Popes periodically hold a worldwide Synod of Bishops at the Vatican to discuss particular topics. Recent worldwide synods have focused on the family and young adults. The 2023 Synod of Bishops is on the topic of “synodality” itself, which is understood as journeying together with encounter, listening and discernment, Archbishop Hebda said.

That’s something that should feel familiar to Catholics in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, he said.

“What we’ve been doing locally, and what the Holy Father wants to do in every diocese in the Church around the world, is living out the teaching of the Second Vatican Council,” Archbishop Hebda said in his homily. “It’s the call for all of us to be holy — not just the bishops or the priests, or even the consecrated women and men, who are indeed so holy. It’s not just for them, but it’s for everyone in the church in virtue of baptism. We’re all given gifts, and we’re all called to be holy and we’re all called to participate in the life of the Church.”

What local participation in the Vatican synod path will look like is yet to be determined, but it will not change the 2022 Archdiocesan Synod process, its leaders confirmed.

“The Holy Father wants to make sure that we as a local church, as an archdiocese, are engaging people in this process,” Archbishop Hebda said of the Vatican Synod, emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit.

“My hope,” he said,” is that tonight as we’re strengthened by the Eucharist, as we have this opportunity to pray together, that we might find our hearts moved to have ideas for how it is that we can engage the whole Church — those who are on the peripheries, those who are those voices that might not be heard at the Vatican — how it is that we, drawing on our experience with our Archdiocesan Synod … might find ways of assisting the Holy Father in addressing the issues and the questions that he’s placed for us.”