What’s happening to synodality?

So far in the papal interregnum, attention has focused elsewhere.

In his homily at Saturday’s papal funeral Mass, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re presented a detailed overview of the Francis pontificate.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin preaches at an April 27, 2025, Mass in St. Peter’s Square. © Vatican Media.

The dean of the College of Cardinals recalled papal trips to Lampedusa, Lesbos, Baghdad, and Abu Dhabi. He namechecked the apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, and the encyclicals Laudato si’ and Fratelli tutti.

But one thing he didn’t mention explicitly — the German journalist Jürgen Erbacher pointed out — was arguably Pope Francis’ signature reform: synodality.

That seems notable given the pope famously described synodality as what “God expects of the Church of the third millennium.”

The word “synodality” — a notoriously hard concept to define that refers to a kind of common discernment between bishops and lay people — also went unmentioned on Sunday, when Cardinal Pietro Parolin celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Square, attended by around 200,000 pilgrims.

Are these omissions significant or a trivial coincidence?

Outward-looking tributes

There may be a simple explanation for Cardinal Re’s failure to refer directly Pope Francis’ flagship project. He focused his homily on the pope’s impact on the world beyond the confines of the Catholic Church, knowing that millions of non-Catholics would be watching the funeral.

Re didn’t mention any of Francis’ internal reforms. Neither the creation of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy nor the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. Neither the new Vatican constitution Praedicate Evangelium nor Vos estis lux mundi, the motu proprio creating a mechanism for holding bishops accountable for their handling of abuse.

Similarly, Cardinal Parolin was addressing a congregation largely composed of young people marking the Jubilee of Teenagers. How many teens are familiar with synodality, even Catholic ones?

Addressing the concept might have required a long digression, describing the 2021-2024 global synodal process, which culminated in the synod on synodality, which produced a final, papally approved document committing the Church to greater synodality.

Parolin’s homily, coinciding with Divine Mercy Sunday, focused instead on the quality of mercy and how it was embodied by Pope Francis. Discussion of internal Church procedures could surely wait for another occasion.

And yet, it does seem curious that synodality hasn’t figured much in the cascade of tributes to Pope Francis offered by cardinals since his April 21 death. Why might that be?

A courtesy to the next pope?

A cynic might argue that synodality has retreated into the background during the papal interregnum because we still, by and large, are uncertain what it means.

Cardinal Oswald Gracias, a member of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinal Advisers, offered a telling anecdote following the pope’s death.

• “When in one of our discussions I asked him about synodality and what exactly was his vision, he turned to me and said, ‘Cardinal, I think Jesus wants the Church to be synodal today. This is what our Lord wants, His mandate and therefore we must work towards it.’ This has been his consistent attitude,” the retired Archbishop of Bombay said.

Perhaps it’s the sweeping, open-ended character of synodality that makes senior churchmen reluctant to include it in their major public reflections on the Francis pontificate. Perhaps no one wants to get ahead of the next pope, who could take the concept in a new, unexpected direction.

Then again, one of Pope Francis’ last major acts was to approve a new three-year period evaluating the synod on synodality, ending in 2028 ecclesial assembly at the Vatican. Synodality would seem, therefore, to be baked into the next pontificate, regardless of who is elected. So courtesy toward the next pope wouldn’t entirely explain synodality’s low profile in recent days.

Jürgen Erbacher, the journalist who noted the lack of reference of synodality at the funeral Mass, offered another explanation. He suggested that “quite a number of cardinals” believe the College of Cardinals’ identity as a college — that is, as a collective body — was diluted in recent years. Although cardinals contributed individually to Vatican affairs as members of dicasteries, they rarely did so as a group.

• “For this reason, a whole series of cardinals would like to see more collegiality rather than more synodality at the end of the pontificate,” Erbacher wrote in an April 27 blog.

The reticence to address synodality may be less about deferring to the next pope than leaving space for the College of Cardinals to discuss the concept freely, and how it should relate to collegiality, a core element of Vatican Council II.