Summary from the Drafting Commission: 31 October

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The closing session began with a prayer reflection led by Fr Orven Gonzaga. The session was chaired by Fr Luigi Vaninetti, who began by saying that the session would consist of four parts: the reading by the Synod Secretary of the decisions taken by the Synod; a statement from the General Econome on the expenses of the Synod; a verbal evaluation of the Synod on the part of the Synod members; the Superior General’s concluding remarks.

Fr José Luis Quintero then read the text of the six proposals which had been agreed by the Synod. These are: the proposal on the Solidarity Fund from the Commission on Solidarity in Finance; the proposal to study the question of criteria for the viability of provinces and the situation of the vicariates in preparation for the 2012 General Chapter; the proposal on giving decision-making powers to the configurations; the proposal that the General Council consult our own religious and the members of the various Passionist lay movements and examine the situation of the various groups, with a view to including references to our Passionist lay movements in both the Constitutions and the General Regulations; the recommendation to provinces regarding the eligibility of Passionist Brothers to the role of First Consultor; the proposal that the configurations continue to operate until the 2012 General Chapter.

The General Econome, Fr Battista Ramponi, then gave the Synod members a detailed breakdown of the costs incurred during the Synod, including travel to Rome for Synod members, food and lodging, rental of equipment for the secretariat and translators, costs for facilitators and invited speakers. He compared these to the costs of the last General Synod in Cuernavaca and the last General Chapter in Rome. He explained how the costs, including travel, would be redistributed around the provinces, vice-provinces and vicariates according to their ability to pay, following the same percentages used for the annual contributions to the General Administration.

Homily for the Closing of the XIV General Synod

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My dearest Brothers of the Congregation,

Let us thank God for these days that we have spent together. Let us do this with the Eucharist where Jesus himself becomes thanksgiving to the Father by his death that is renewed and offered in another “Last Supper” in the cenacle of this chapel where He again is priest and victim and where we, together with Him, form the mystical body which is the Church.

Solidarity has its maximum expression on the Cross where Jesus dies for us and in the Cenacle where He takes bread, which is His body, and breaks it and shares it among the disciples. He takes the cup, which is His blood, and he gives it to the disciples so that they may all drink from it. Breaking and sharing the same bread and drinking from the same cup are the “sign” of sharing and solidarity and doing this we “remember.” We do this in this Eucharistic sacrifice where: “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” (1Cor.10:17) Personal choices, choices as a Synod and as a Congregation cannot contradict what we are celebrating. It was sharing and breaking the bread that it could be distributed, that enabled the disciples of Emmaus to recognize Jesus.

However, the days of this Synod, two years after the Synod of Cuernavaca, were not easy. We experienced foggy days, feeling lost, feeling afraid and feeling tempted to a “reverse Exodus”—wanting to turn back, like Israel, to slave labor and the precarious life in Egypt. God had a plan for his people; it was not a plan to help the powerful, but to free the oppressed.