Baldisseri, who had never attended a synod
before, said in an interview with L’Osservatore
Romano that he found the whole process much less rigid than expected.
That’s no doubt due in part to Pope Francis’ move away from formal speechgiving
and toward more open debate. Baldisseri characterized the debate as “serious, constructive
and not at all dramatic” (others have used words like “impassioned” and
“direct,” which implies that differences have been aired forcefully).
In the synod’s first week, Baldisseri said,
there were 180 planned interventions
and 85 additional talks during the
free-discussion period. He defended the synod’s decision not to publish summaries of the talks, saying that summaries did
not accurately reflect the debate, anyway. Much better, he said, to allow synod fathers to talk directly with journalists.
Baldisseri said that after the relatio post disceptationem is presented Monday, the circoli minores will have the task of presenting proposed revisions
– modi in Latin – which will be presented
Thursday in the synod hall. On Saturday, the synod assembly will vote on the
final relatio – which insiders say
will probably look a lot like the text presented Monday – and give it to the
pope. Most bishops believe the pope will
make that final relatio synodi public, but no one is sure when. The bishops
will also publish a message to the world, generally a more rhetorical text that
skims over controversial issues.

“We need to overcome the habit of placing
ourselves comfortably at the center, like the priests and Pharisees (of Jesus’
time), in order to open ourselves up to the periphery, recognizing that those
at the margins are also recipients of God’s generosity,” he said.
A fundamental condition of the good
Christian life, the pope added, was charity toward God and other people,
expressed concretely in sacrificial acts, especially toward the weakest and the
persecuted.
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