ROME – A final synthesis produced by Pope Francis’s month-long Synod of Bishops on Synodality offered no clear or concrete proposals on hot-button issues, which one Vatican official explained Saturday night as the product of a search for an “ample and convincing consensus.”
“Ecclesial discernment, which is based on mutual listening to understand where the spirit is leading the Church, is based on the criterion of consensus,” said Maltese Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, who put the word “consensus” in all-caps to underscore his point.
