Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen has given a positive assessment of the Synod on Synodality of the Catholic Church which ended on Sunday.
In an interview with the Catholic website katholisch.de published on Thursday), Overbeck said the four-week consultations by around 350 bishops and Catholic laypeople on the future of the Church had been a renewal for him.
At the same time, he called for more open discussions on the controversial issues in the Universal Church in the second stage of the Synod in 2024. Overbeck is one of the five bishops from Germany who attended the meeting and is considered a leading reformer among German bishops.
Overbeck said there were different views on issues in the Universal Church that depended on culture, history, and experience. For example, the question of equal rights for women and men was completely different in Germany than in many societies of the global south.
He said he had observed that the German stance in the consultations had been deeply skeptical and even rejectionist at the start. ”But that changed over time.” The participation of women in the Synod on Synodality, with the right to vote and consult, had made it possible to address these issues in a completely different way.
The final paper was undoubtedly a compromise text, the bishop emphasised. But more than 80 percent of the synodal members had been able to support it, including a section on queer people. “That was almost a miracle,” Overbeck added. He said it was important to him that this issue was reflected in the document at all.
“If ‘LGBTQ+’ had been mentioned in the text, it would have been tantamount to a deliberate provocation for some people in the assembly hall,” he said.
Originally reported by KNA Germany.
