Things To Know About the Vatican’s Big Meeting on the Future of the Catholic Church

A massive, 3-and-a-half-week gathering of Catholic church leaders kicks off at the Vatican on Wednesday, where bishops and laypeople will assemble to discuss a host of issues concerning the church, including women in church governance and LGBTQ Catholics.

Perhaps most notably, the Synod on Synodality, which runs through Oct. 29, will be the first assembly of its kind where women in the Catholic Church will have the right to vote on those issues, giving them more of a say in some of their religion's most pressing problems alongside bishops from around the world.

Maria Lia Zervino, the head of the main Vatican-backed World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations, considers the inclusion of women's voices in the upcoming conference to be a watershed moment, and possibly the most consequential action Pope Francis has taken during his papacy.

“Not only because of these events in October in Rome, but because the church has found a different way of being church,” Zervino said in a recent interview with the Associated Press in her Vatican offices. “And for women, this is an extraordinary step forward.”

Women have long complained they are treated as second-class citizens in the church, barred from the priesthood and highest ranks of power yet responsible for the lion’s share of church work — teaching in Catholic schools, running Catholic hospitals and passing the faith down to next generations.

They have long demanded a greater say in church governance, at the very least with voting rights at the periodic synods at the Vatican but also the right to preach at Mass and be ordained as priests. While they have secured some high-profile positions in the Vatican and local churches around the globe, the male hierarchy still runs the show.

The 3-week synod is putting them more or less on an equal playing field to debate agenda items, including such hot-button issues as women in governance, LGBTQ+ Catholics and priestly celibacy. It's the culmination of an unprecedented two-year canvasing of rank-and-file Catholics about their hopes for the future of the institution.

It's widely believed that the potential of this synod, and a second session next year, could lead to real change on previously taboo topics has given hope to many women and progressive Catholics.

At the same time, it has sparked alarm from conservatives, some of whom have warned that the process risks opening a “Pandora’s Box” that will split the church.

American Cardinal Raymond Burke, a frequent Francis critic, recently wrote that the synod and its new vision for the church “have become slogans behind which a revolution is at work to change radically the church's self-understanding in accord with a contemporary ideology which denies much of what the church has always taught and practiced.”

Outspoken Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland has warned the synod stands to undermine the Catholic faith's "basic truths," writing in August that an "evil and false message" has "invaded the church."

In a Sept. 26 open letter, Strickland wrote about how the church sees transgender issues and others under what he called the "LGBTQ agenda."

He wrote the synod "is emerging as an attempt by some to change the focus of Catholicism from eternal salvation of souls in Christ, to making every person feel affirmed regardless of what choices they have made or will make in life."

Synods, which date back to the 1960s, can be held on various topics. Francis has held synods on family, youth and other subjects over the past 10 years.

This year's gathering will focus on the practice of working in a synod, which church leadership has described as "journeying together."

Of the 464 participants of the upcoming assembly, 365 are voting members and 54 of them will be women.

“I think the church has just come to a point of realization that the church belongs to all of us, to all the baptized,” said Sheila Pires, who works for the South African bishops' Conference and is a member of the synod’s communications team.

Women, she said, are leading the charge calling for change.

“I don’t want to use the word revolution,” Pires said in an interview with the AP in Johannesburg. But women “want their voices to be heard, not just towards decision-making, but also during decision-making. Women want to be part of that.”

–With the Associated Press