Canadian bishops hear Latin American archbishop on synodal church

Canadian bishops discussed the development of a synodal Church during their annual plenary meeting in Montreal from Sept. 21 to 25. During the meeting, Lizardo Estrada Herrera, coadjutor archbishop of Cusco and secretary general of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (CELAM), gave a 55-minute keynote on Sept. 22. He traced the history of synodality in his region back 70 years to the 1955 founding of CELAM.

In contrast to the Latin American experience, Bishop Alain Faubert of Quebec provided a 17-minute update on the work of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Implementation of Synodality in the Church in Canada, which has been active since 2021.

Bishop Faubert and Archbishop Donald J. Bolen of Regina noted that while synodality grew organically from existing Church culture in Latin America and the Caribbean, the concept in Canada arrived from the Vatican. Archbishop Bolen told the Peruvian archbishop that the process in Canada feels like something coming from the outside, whereas in Latin America, it appears to be an outgrowth of local traditions.