Papal synodality: Why Pope Leo gave Eastern Churches the power to remove Patriarchs

Twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches are in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. Six are headed by a patriarch: the Coptic, Syriac, Melkite Greek, Maronite, Chaldean, and Armenian Catholic Churches. Four more are headed by a major archbishop, an office that carries substantially the powers of a patriarch under a different title.

These ten Churches are not dioceses of the Latin Church with unusual ceremonies. Each governs itself through its own synod of bishops (a legally very different animal to Latin conceptions and practice of synods), elects its own head, and legislates its own particular law.

That self-governance is not a courtesy extended by Rome. It is a right recognized in the universal Church’s own legislation for the Eastern Churches, the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, promulgated in 1990.

Self-governance, however, had a gap in it. Canon 1060 §1, n. 1 reserves to the Roman Pontiff alone the right to judge a patriarch. A synod could disagree with its patriarch, and could say so, but it could not act. What that gap cost is not a matter of speculation. The new legislation records