Vatican City, 08 October, 2023 / 9:28 pm (ACI Africa).
A leading African prelate participating in the Synod on Synodality expressed confidence Saturday that the process’ outcome will be “welcomed by everyone as the will of God.”
Congolese Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu also sought to counter what he called “excessive expectations” by some in the Church that the Synod would “bring solutions to all their problems.” Instead, he argued that the initiative is about providing “new ways to address problems, whatever they are” with “a spirit of synodality.”
“I don’t think the Synod’s goals consist in facing this way or that, but in a new way of being a Church, a new spirit,” said Besungu, who is the archbishop of Kinshasa as well as the president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar.
His comments, delivered during an afternoon press conference held by the Synod’s organizers, sparked questions about the actual authority of the Synod on its own to set a course for the Church — an issue that loomed large in a recent exchange between Pope Francis and a group of five senior cardinals who went public on the eve of the Synod with their grave reservations about the process that’s now well-underway at the Vatican.
Among the questions Besungu was asked was how the Synod’s outcome could be considered an authoritative expression of God’s will given that it lacks the special status of an ecumenical council, as the Second Vatican Council had.