German plans for new synodal body advance after papal election
The new body would ‘make fundamental decisions on pastoral planning.’
Members of the German synodal committee will decide in November whether to approve statutes establishing a new national synodal body, in a step that could reignite tensions between the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Germany.
A statement at the end of the synodal committee’s plenary meeting in Magdeburg said the new body would “make fundamental decisions on pastoral planning and future issues of the Church of supradiocesan importance,” as well as advising “on financial and budgetary matters of the Catholic Church in Germany that are not decided at diocesan level.”
Vatican resistance
The creation of a new nationwide synodal body was one of the most controversial proposals endorsed by participants in the 2019-2023 synodal way, co-sponsored by the bishops’ conference and the lay Central Committee of German Catholics, known by its German abbreviation, ZdK.
The initiative, launched in the wake of a harrowing abuse crisis, produced 150 pages of resolutions, appealing for women deacons, a re-examination of priestly celibacy, lay preaching at Masses, a bigger lay role in selecting bishops, and a revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on homosexuality.
A resolution approved in September 2022 called for the establishment of a permanent “advisory and decision-making body” known as the synodal council, composed of bishops and lay people.
It said the new body would “take fundamental decisions of supradiocesan significance on pastoral planning, future perspectives of the Church, and financial and budgetary matters of the Church that are not decided at diocesan level.”
But in January 2023, the Vatican informed the German bishops that neither they nor synodal way participants had the authority to establish the body.
The Vatican argued that the synodal council would represent “a new governance structure of the Church in Germany which … would place itself above the authority of the German bishops’ conference and would in fact appear to replace it,” undermining episcopal authority as outlined in the documents of Vatican Council II.
But after the synodal way ended in March 2023, a new interim body known as the synodal committee was established with the main task of setting up the synodal council by March 2026.
In February 2024, the Vatican asked the German episcopate to postpone a vote on the statutes of the transitional synodal committee, ahead of talks between German bishops and curial officials in Rome.
The signatories of the Vatican letter included Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, the then-prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and now Pope Leo XIV.
German bishops flew to Rome in March 2024 for discussions with senior Vatican officials, building on talks over the synodal way that began during their last ad limina visit in 2022. The Vatican representatives at the meeting included Cardinal Prevost.
At a follow-up meeting in June 2024, also attended by Cardinal Prevost, the German bishops and the Vatican issued a joint statement, saying that a commission created by the German synodal committee would “deal with questions of synodality and the structure of a synod body.”
The statement said the commission would “work in close contact with a similar commission composed of representatives of the competent dicasteries in order to draw up a draft.”
It added that Vatican officials had requested that the name “synodal council” be dropped and other unspecified aspects of the proposed body be changed.
The statement said the new body should be “neither above nor at the same level as the bishops’ conference.”
Tensions over membership
At last week’s meeting in Magdeburg, there was “a lively debate on the structure” of the new body, according to the press release issued by organizers.
Katholisch.de, the official news website of the Catholic Church in Germany, reported that there was a “fierce” debate over how many ZdK members should sit on the future body.
“Some synod members raised the idea of whether there necessarily needed to be as many ZdK members as bishops, or whether this number could be reduced in favor of other groups. Representatives of the lay body strongly disagreed,” it said.
Critics have questioned to what extent the ZdK accurately represents the wider Catholic community in Germany.
Ultimately, synodal committee members voted that the new body should include all 27 bishops leading German dioceses and an equal number of ZdK members. Further individuals may be elected to the body by the bishops and ZdK representatives.
Outreach to Pope Leo
Synodal committee members sent a congratulatory message to Pope Leo XIV, following his May 8 election.
The message described Pope Leo’s first greeting, in which he said “we want to be a synodal Church,” as “an encouragement when we discuss the path of the Church in Germany and its mission in the world in our assembly.”
“We are striving together — for a Church that is courageous, that excludes no one, that is open to dialogue, for a Church that is forward-looking in the sense of St. Augustine, whom you quoted: ‘With you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop,’” the message to the pope said.
Bishop Georg Bätzing, the chairman of the German bishops’ conference, observed that the pope’s election had a positive impact on the synodal committee’s meeting.
“With the momentum of a new pope, we had constructive discussions here in Magdeburg — as in previous meetings — and wrestled over texts and decisions,” he said. “The synodal body at the national level is slowly taking shape.”
But other German bishops have expressed caution about Pope Leo’s potential impact on the synodal way project.
Essen’s Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck described Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pope, as “reserved” concerning the issues discussed in Germany.
“We are really in a different world to the one he experienced in Peru,” Overbeck said, referring to the new pope’s years as an Augustinian missionary priest and later bishop in the Latin American country.
The German-born Bishop Norbert Strotmann, who served as general secretary of Peru’s bishops’ conference from 2017 to 2023, said he did not expect Pope Leo “to respond to regional reform requests.”
“He has experienced — for example, with regard to the bishops’ conference in his home country of the USA — how difficult it is to bring conservative and progressive currents together,” Strotmann told the German Catholic news site kirche-und-leben.de
“I can’t imagine him taking steps that would cost him the support of a quarter or a third of the faithful.”
The 78-year-old Bishop Emeritus of Chosica added: “In discussions, I have found him to be a good listener and a calming influence. He is not someone who fuels a smouldering debate. He can be someone who holds the global Church together.”
Papal interregnum developments
Following Pope Francis’ April 21 death, the German bishops’ conference publicized a handout for pastoral workers on blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples. Critics claimed that the document, dated April 4, was at variance with the 2023 Vatican declaration Fiducia supplicans.
The handout was approved by a body known as the Joint Conference, which periodically brings together representatives of the bishops’ conference and ZdK.
Meanwhile, on May 3, Bishop Bätzing underlined his commitment to women’s ordination in the Catholic Church.
Speaking at the German Protestant Kirchentag in Hanover, he said: “I wish it and will do everything for it.”
Pope John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis declared that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
Synodal way participants endorsed a resolution in 2022 calling for Ordinatio sacerdotalis to be reviewed because it “is not accepted and understood by the people of God in large parts.”
In October 2023, the Vatican indicated it would not discuss the possibility of women priests in talks with representatives of the German bishops over the synodal way.
At a Vatican press conference that month, Cardinal Prevost expressed skepticism about “clericalizing women.”
He said that “the apostolic tradition is something that has been spelled out very clearly, especially if you want to talk about the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood.”
He added: “Something that needs to be said also is that ordaining women — and there’s been some women that have said this interestingly enough — ‘clericalizing women’ doesn’t necessarily solve a problem, it might make a new problem.”
At the May 9-10 meeting, the synodal committee adopted a text entitled “Respecting decisions of conscience in matters of birth control - rehabilitating wounded spouses.”
The text, which was reportedly previously considered by synodal way participants but not adopted, contains “a request for forgiveness for married couples who have suffered as a result of the assessment of contraception by Church representatives,” according to katholisch.de.
A draft document entitled “Magisterial statements on conjugal love” had its first reading at a synodal way assembly in 2022 but proceeded no further.
The 2022 text called, among other things, for changes to the section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that says: “Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).”
It is unclear how the 2022 draft compares with the newly approved document, as the 2025 text does not appear to have been published.
Synodal committee members are scheduled to make a final decision on the new synodal body’s statutes at a Nov. 21-22 meeting in Fulda. Meanwhile, a commission chaired by Bishop Overbeck and the law professor Charlotte Kreuter-Kirchhof will continue to refine the draft.
According to katholisch.de, Overbeck shared a first draft of the statutes before Pope Francis’ death with Archbishop Filippo Iannone, the prefect of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, noting they were under revision.
Kreuter-Kirchhof reportedly said the intention was to keep the statutes as brief as possible, as they only needed approval from Rome.
The synodal committee is due to hold its sixth and final plenary meeting in January 2026.
Katholisch.de quoted Aachen’s Bishop Helmut Dieser as saying: “We are at the beginning of something big that will change the Catholic Church in Germany.”
“If this comes from the Holy Spirit, then we need not be afraid.”
“If this comes from the Holy Spirit, then we need not be afraid.”
I have often felt that the crisis in so many parts of the Church is directly connected with a crisis of prayer. And when I say prayer, I refer to truly listening to God in silence and contemplation and then acting. Because there is no way that people of deep prayer can turn about and say that the Holy Spirit is asking them to challenge Church teaching, or in other words, that the Holy Spirit is contradicting Himself.
In my own country of Ireland, it often amazes me how a group of people can gather together, say a quick token gesture prayer that mentions the words 'Holy Spirit', then proceed to rip Church teaching apart and say it was Holy Spirit led because they prayed to the Holy Spirit before hand.
Could the Pillar lay out the different ways this is resolved? From maximalist German schism to maximalist Roman intervention? The different chess moves, what steps Pope Leo can take, etc.?