Cardinal Hollerich on how synodality has developed.

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich speaks about the synod of bishops on synodality that will open in the Vatican on Oct. 4, at which for the first time women will participate as full members with the right to vote.

On July 8, 2021, Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Hollerich to the key role of relator general for the synod. This means he will be one of the most influential figures at the synod. As relator general, he will deliver the keynote address to the plenary assembly on Oct. 5 and will also give a keynote talk at the opening of the discussion on each of the five “segments” of the Working Document (a synodal church, communion, mission, participation and a conclusion). He will also preside over the drafting of the text that will bring together the fruits of the October 2023 synod and launch the work for the second session, which will open in October 2024.

Born in southwestern Luxembourg in 1958, the polyglot Cardinal Hollerich, 64, is a member of the Japanese province of the Jesuits and lived in Japan from 1985-89 and again from 1994-2011 when he held teaching and other positions at the Jesuit-run Sophia University in Tokyo. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as archbishop of Luxembourg in 2011, and Pope Francis made him a cardinal in 2019, naming him relator general for the synod two years later. In 2023, the pope appointed him to his council of nine cardinal advisors.

he and Cardinal Mario Grech, general secretary of the synod, had met with Pope Francis and received from him the list of names of some 400 participants that the pope had approved for the synod.

Cardinal Hollerich agrees that the Synod on Synodality is very different from any other synod that has taken place since Paul VI first established the institution on Sept. 15, 1965, at the request of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

Since Francis became pope, he said, “you see a development in all the synods” in terms of consultations before the synod meeting. At the Synod on the Family (2014-15), “there were some questions which are still very complicated for people even to understand.” For the world Synod on Youth (2018), “There was a pre-synod of the young people, and a lot of what these young people said entered the working document of that synod.” Then, for the Synod on the Amazon (2019), “you had REPAM [the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network] and a whole preparation network.” And now for this synod, Cardinal Hollerich said, “one more step has been taken; there has been a whole process that is part of the synod, and the synod of bishops that will be held in October 2023 and October 2024 is just the completion of that whole process.”

Even though lay women and men, clergy, and men and women religious—in other words, “non-bishops”—will participate as synod “members” with the right to vote alongside the bishops, Cardinal Hollerich said it will still be called a “Synod of Bishops.” He explained that the laity, clergy and religious from the different countries and continents present “have a special function: They are the testimonies to the [synodal] process” that has already taken place. “The bishops, for their part, have the full pastoral task of final discernment, but they cannot just discern about anything. There is a method for discernment, and there is first a listening experience before discernment. And so these testimonies in fact guarantee that the synod of bishops is a process [in continuity] with what has happened before.”

He underlined that “there are processes [to be followed]. Each small group, each round table, will have a facilitator to help the group. But I cannot predetermine how each group will react because the participants are free.

The methodology that will be used at the October synod is a key factor in helping the synod members discern, the cardinal said. It is called “conversation in the Spirit,” and it is one of the fruits that has resulted from the listening and participating phases of the synod since the process started in October 2021.