Canada’s Catholic bishops spent two full sessions at their recent plenary signing off on a major overhaul of how the national conference of prelates should operate.

But mum’s the word for now on whether they should tell the faithful in the pews about specific changes.

“We’ll discuss it at our permanent council to see the possibility to make it public,” Quebec’s Bishop Pierre Goudreault told The Catholic Register as the five-day annual meeting concluded last Friday.

Advertisement

Goudreault, Bishop of the Diocese of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, chaired both session where 23 governance recommendations for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops were hashed through and approved.

The move concludes a two-year review of CCCB operating procedures. At the wind-up media conference, CCCB President William McGrattan commended Goudreault for taking a “leadership role” in restructuring the Conference’s processes. McGrattan said the bishops modelled their restructuring approach on the “synodal method” that will be used at the concluding Synod of Synodalities taking place in Rome  this month.

“The steps of listening to the bishops and the CCCB staff has been in modelling the synodal method,” the Calgary bishop said.

But neither he nor Goudreault could divulge what the nearly two dozen recommendations are – or when they’ll be made visible for lay consideration. Wait and see seemed the watch word. And for the five days, there was no public watching or seeing. 

The plenary, which the 79 CCCB bishops began on Sept. 23, took place almost exclusively behind closed doors.

It began with the ancient invocation of the Holy Spirit Venite Creator Spiritus, fittingly at a conference centre situated in the shadow of Mont Ste. Anne, near the national shrine of the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, east of Quebec City. The location was chosen as the Archdiocese of Quebec this year is celebrating its 350th anniversary.

Advertisement

In fact, the day before the plenary began, the bishops joined Quebec Cardinal Gerald Lacroix and Pope Francis’ special envoy Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, Archbishop of Marseille, for a solemn Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Notre Dame de Québec, in thanksgiving for the first Catholic diocese of North America.

The gathering’s first day was the front-facing portion of the assembly and also served to set the tone for the week. McGrattan noted the bishops were gathered on the “eve of the second session of the Bishop’s Synod on Synodality in Rome and in anticipation of the Jubilee Year of Hope in 2025.”

Moncton Archbishop Guy Desrochers is the episcopal point-person for Canadian celebration of Jubilee 2025 and spoke to the CCCB planning for events in both Rome and Canada. Desrochers noted that Pope Francis has directed the theme of the jubilee year, Pilgrims of Hope, towards the Christian virtue of hope because he knows we are “in need of hope, because of war and poverty, and a lack of solidarity.”

“I think the purpose of this is to unite us, in fact, to go on pilgrimage is a way to unite us,” Desrochers said. “In every diocese, we are trying to reach out to all the people so that they will celebrate. Even if they can’t go to Rome, they can celebrate in their own diocese locally in many ways.”

Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, delivered the plenary keynote remotely from Rome. Grech spoke directly about the implications of the “synodal process” for episcopal ministry. 

The bishop is the “indispensable subject of the synodal process,” Grech said, noting the synod encourages a “healthy decentralization.” It is a “new scheme, new method,” but “without the bishop there is no ecclesial discernment.”

Identifying “service” as the foundation of episcopal authority, Grech admonished the gathered bishops to “never forget that for the disciples of Jesus, yesterday, today and always, the only authority is the possibility of service.”

Advertisement

The bishops also received a 15-minute bilingual address from the papal nuncio to Canada, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovič, who told them there is “no fruitful ministry without communion with the See of Rome.”

“Beyond organizational considerations and important sharing of resources, given that we wrestle with many pressing spiritual, moral and social issues, living as we do in a society characterized by polarization and division, it is absolutely necessary that we bishops reserve and enhance not only the unity of faith and worship, but a collegiality that is affective and effective among ourselves.”