This post was originally published on this site.
The Catholic Church needs an “independent ecclesiastical commission” to evaluate bishops’ ad limina visits.
That is one of the conclusions of a nine-page document released Sept. 8 by the Vatican’s General Secretariat of the Synod on the visits that regional groupings of bishops are required to make roughly every five years to Rome.
The text also calls for online follow-up meetings between bishops and officials of the Roman curia to address issues raised during what are formally known as visits ad limina apostolorum (“to the threshold of the apostles”).
But the document acknowledges that sweeping changes to the ad limina visit process requested by bishops might not be feasible because they could add significantly to the workload of an already stretched Roman curia.
“The Ad Limina Visits in a Missionary Synodal Perspective” is the second text prepared by Study Group 7, one of 10 groups established by Pope Francis in 2024 after the synod on synodality’s first session in Rome.
Study Group 7, which was led by the German Bishop Felix Genn, issued its first document, on the selection of
Read more...
