Vatican City, Oct 3, 2019 / 09:15 am
Speaking at a press conference Thursday on the Vatican's upcoming Amazon synod, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, head of the Synod of Bishops, played down the importance of the synod's working document, saying it is neither a "papal document" nor "magisterium."
In response to a question Oct. 3 about the criticisms some bishops and cardinals have expressed about the working document, or Instrumentum laboris, Baldisseri said, "criticisms are good." The Instrumentum laboris was the work of two years of listening to the questions of people in the Amazon, he stated, saying he thinks "it is necessary to listen and not to judge."
The cardinal also underlined that synod assemblies are consultative, not deliberative, and said the real "final document" of a Synod of Bishops is whatever document the pope may decide to issue afterward, and not the synodal and pre-synodal documents themselves.
"They do not have the signature of the pope," he said, noting that for this reason, he does not think it is necessary to make judgements about the Instrumentum laboris.