Curtain comes down on Roman Catholic Church Synod 2015

Persons should soon be able to witness change within the Roman Catholic Church of St Vincent and the Grenadines, as the people of the church have set a new agenda, to be implemented over the next five years.

This past weekend, during Synod 2015, which was held {{more}}at the St Vincent and the Grenadines Community College, Villa Campus, Catholics within the Diocese of Kingstown attended rigorous sessions over two days, and voted on several recommendations, with the intent of taking the church forward.

When he spoke with SEARCHLIGHT at the close of the event, Bishop Jason Gordon declared that the working days were productive, as there was significant participation from the people involved.

“We did a lot of work in the two days. To move as many resolutions as we have through the floor has been quite an amazing achievement. And I mean generally, I could only say it was two days of grace, because people have learnt a lot about the church that they didn’t know before,” he said.

Gordon explained that persons will be mobilized within the church to help implement a new diocesan structure, which will be set in motion within the next couple weeks, and will reflect the resolutions put forward from Synod 2015.

“This is the moment of implementation. We’re going to do that for the next three years; we’ll pause, we’ll stop, we’ll come back, we’ll review and then we’re going to go again for the next two years, because this is a five-year agenda. We’re going forward with this and we have to be relentless in heading to 2020 and relentless in using these resolutions as the guide for the church that is emerging,” the bishop said.

It is the hope that there will be a synod in 2020 and while it is too early to say what will be addressed at this future event, Gordon imagines that it will speak to where the Church has come from in the previous five years, what it will be at that point with the implemented resolutions and where they want to be for the future.

At this year’s event, the church focused on the Word, Eucharist and Service and other areas of the Church, including evangelization and the family and youth.

“The Church and her mission and her teaching has been around for many civilizations, either as an aid in the development of people, or a standard against which many civilizations have found themselves in conflict. The role of the Church is to hold to the truth that has been handed down to us from Christ and to help civilization in its development towards what we would call authentic integral human development, so that all our people grow and become the best that they can possibly be and that’s why there is a whole set of resolutions on service, because that’s how we reach back to the poor, that’s why the Catholic Church does a lot of work with the poor in St Vincent and the Grenadines and all of that is really the way in which we help civilization, the way in which we help people become the best that they can become, whether they are Catholics or not Catholics. So Synod 2015 has really pushed us much more firmly in that direction,” the bishop told SEARCHLIGHT.

Over 200 delegates represented various sectors of the church at last weekend’s event. The closing mass was held at the SVGCC Villa Campus on Sunday at 9 a.m., following which members of the Diocese enjoyed a day of fellowship with one another.(BK)