Mumbai (CCBI): His Eminence Oswald Cardinal Gracias, the Archbishop of Bombay, President of the CBCI, and one of the topmost consultors of Pope Francis, appealed to every Catholic faithful to transform the Church in India to a Synodal Church. He was inaugurating the diocesan phase of the Synod at the Holy Name Cathedral, Mumbai on Sunday 17 October, 2021 and also released a Handbook for the Synod: “For a Synodal Church”.

“To transform the Church to a Synodal Church, we have to walk together in the same path including everybody, we have to encounter Jesus through prayer and adoration and to hear what the Spirit wants to say to the Church. Church should listen to all than hearing.”

Quoting Pope Francis the Cardinal Oswald reiterated that: the Synod is a process of spiritual discernment, of ecclesial discernment, that unfolds in adoration, in prayer and in dialogue with the word of God.”

The Handbook for the Synod is a useful tool for all those involved in the two-year-long ‘Synodal Journey’, which will unfold itself in three phases of consultations, at the diocesan, the continental, and the universal levels, culminating in October 2023, in Rome.