Originally published at Southern Cross
By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY — The second session of the Synod of Bishops on synodality, which will bring 368 bishops, priests, religious and laypeople to the Vatican, including Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, of the Diocese of San Diego, will be held Oct. 2 to 27.
In July, the Vatican released a working document of what the second session of the synod would undertake during its monthlong gathering. The document said the synod should spur the Church to become a “refuge” for those in need and encourage Catholics to “allow themselves to be led by the Spirit of the Lord to horizons that they had not previously glimpsed” as brothers and sisters in Christ.
“This is the ongoing conversion of the way of being the Church that the synodal process invites us to undertake,” the document said.
The document will serve as a discussion guideline for the second session, which will reflect on the theme: “How to be a missionary synodal Church.” The reflections are the next step in the synod’s overarching theme: “For a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission.”
Two key challenges facing the Church are “the growing isolation of people and cultural individualism, which even the Church has