Vatican: Next Synod in 2018 on vocations

Ordinations in Orlondo (United States).

The Press Office of the Holy See announced on November 23, 2016, the distribution of a questionnaire on vocations to the bishops’ conferences and to the various Eastern Churches, which was then to be forwarded to all the dioceses as well as to the faithful. The objective is to prepare for the next Synod of Bishops on “young people, the faith and discerning vocations”, which is scheduled for October 2018.

This topic, “an expression of the Church’s pastoral solicitude for young people,” is “in continuity with the conclusions of the recent synodal assemblies on the family and with the contents of the Post-Synodal Exhortation Amoris laetitia,” the Holy See stresses in a communiqué reprinted by La Croix on October 6. In it we can read also that the debates will aim “to accompany young people on their existential path toward maturity so that, through a process of discernment, they may discover their life’s plan and carry it out in the joy and openness of their encounter with God and with men, and participate actively in building up the Church and society.” It is not certain that this sociological jargon will increase the number of vocations, which has constantly declined in the countries of the “silent apostasy”.

(Sources: cath.ch/lacrois – DICI no. 347 dated December 23, 2016)

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