The working document, or instrumentum laboris, for next October’s meeting of the Synod of Bishops is “taking up again” the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on the church by focusing on the missionary responsibility of all the baptized in the synodal church.
That is what Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich (pictured), the relator general for next October’s synod, said in this exclusive interview with America’s Vatican correspondent.
He emphasised the importance of the working document’s attention to affirming and promoting the role of women in the Church in the 21st century and said, “If women do not feel comfortable in the Church, we have failed our living as Christians.”
He explained that “synodality is the path the church has to follow in order to fight the polarisation” that exists in the Church and world today by seeking to harmonise differences.
Cardinal Hollerich presented the instrumentum laboris together with Cardinal Mario Grech, the secretary general of the synod, at a press conference in the Vatican on July 9.
I sat down with him afterward at the office of the synod’s secretariat on Via della Conciliazione.
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich
The Luxembourg-born cardinal, who will turn 66 in August, is a member of the Japanese province of the Jesuits.
He lived in Japan from 1985-89 and again from 1994 to 2011, when Benedict XVI appointed him to be archbishop of Luxembourg.
Pope Francis made him a cardinal in 2019, named him relator general for the synod in 2021 and appointed him to his council of nine cardinal advisors in 2023.
He is one of the most influential figures at the October synod, together with Cardinal Grech. As relator general, he will deliver the keynote address to the synod’s opening plenary assembly in October and will preside over the drafting of its final text. Read more
- Gerard O’Connell is America’s Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History.