NCR’s national and Vatican correspondents are covering the worldwide meeting of Catholic bishops on young people and Sunday’s canonizations of Archbishop Oscar Romero, Pope Paul VI and four others.
Synod news
Yesterday’s briefing included a summary that bishops were optimistic that the synod could make a difference for young people, but also mentioned dangers of new forms of totalitarianism and political populism.
Reports from the English-speaking working groups, which include the U.S. representatives, say the bishops have spent time considering the impact of clergy abuse scandals on the global church's credibility.
Some at the synod have expressed concern that the final document for young people will not be effective in communicating to them, instead suggesting a series of short videos.
The bishops who will write that final document have been selected.
The FutureChurch blog has been following how women’s issues are being discussed (or not) at the synod.
New Ways Ministry’s blog has summarized what the working groups have had to say about sexuality and LGBT issues.
Canonizations
On Sunday, the church will have six new saints: Pope Francis will canonize Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered in 1980 for speaking out against military oppression, and Pope Paul VI, the pontiff who first appointed Romero a bishop and made the fateful decision in 1977 to make him archbishop of San Salvador.
The four others include two Italian priests and German and Spanish founders of separate women’s religious orders: Francesco Spinelli, Vincenzo Romano, Maria Caterina Kasper, Nazaria Ignazia and Nunzio Sulprizio
Although some think Romero had a conversion to the needs of the poor after the death of his friend, Jesuit Fr. Rutilio Grande, others say Romero’s seeing firsthand the poverty and repression of rural farmworkers led him to change.
The German founder of the Poor Handmaids of Christ also will be canonized. The order came to Indiana in 1868; today there are 69 Poor Handmaids in the U.S., according to Global Sisters Report.
Mark Piper says it’s appropriate that Nunzio Sulprizio, who was 19 when he died of bone cancer, is being canonized during the Synod on the Youth.
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