Nicole Perone ’16 M.Div. recently traveled to Rome, where she met Pope Francis and participated in a Pre-Synodal meeting of young people from around the world. YDS asked her to write this reflection on her experience.
By Nicole Perone
Pope Francis has convened the 15th Synod of Bishops for October of 2018. A Synod of Bishops brings together bishops from around the world to discuss important topics in a fraternal way with the Pope, their brother bishop and leader. The 15th Synod has as its focus “young people, faith, and vocational discernment.” It is a vital topic in a time where many young people, especially in the United States, are disaffiliating with the Church, ceasing to practice, or leaving altogether.
In his wisdom, Pope Francis invited 300 young people from around the world (many Catholic, but also young people of others faiths and of no faith at all) to come together in Rome for one week as a Pre-Synodal meeting—a gathering tasked with preparing a document that will inform the Pope and Bishops’ work in October. I had the honor of being invited to the gathering as one of the delegates, representing an ecclesial movement called Voices of Faith. It is always a joy to have the opportunity to return to Rome, my favorite city in the world, but especially for such a historic reason.
I imagine that I will be processing the experience of the Pre-Synodal Meeting for quite some time. The week began with our Holy Father spending much of his day with us, hearing testimonies of the experiences of young people from different regions and responding to questions. I also had the unbelievable opportunity to personally meet Pope Francis, the catalyst for the gathering. It was deeply moving for me to have such an encounter with someone who has so inspired me and countless others, and who believed the voices of young people needed to be heard.
We spent the week working in small groups sorted by language to process a variety of questions on the experience of young people in both the Church and the world, as well as their own understanding of discernment. By sheer divine providence, I was selected to be on the committee tasked with writing the document seen as one of the major outcomes of the Pre-Synodal Meeting.
This, for me, was one of the most profound experiences of the week. My committee colleagues and I carried the responsibility as an immense honor and burden. We collected all that we heard, read, and saw and shaped it into a concise document. By the end of the week, seeing how we young people had come to take ownership of the process and the document bearing our name, I realized that a great burden can sometimes be the gateway to great joy.
In order to understand why the document we wrote is worth reading, it is important to name one major reason why the Pre-Synodal Meeting matters: It brought together the topics of the conversation in a way that made them protagonists of the conversation and that created space that became the conduit for the views, needs, struggles, and dreams of young people. It is authentic to bring the people that you are talking about to the table and invite them to help shape the conversation in a way that is faithful to their lived experience. This is what Pope Francis did by asking us young people to be present: He invited us to have a hand in the ways the Church will hear, understand, and engage with us.
Of course, those who work with young people in any ministry capacity should read this document. But, truly, I feel that it is most accessible and relevant to the many faithful Catholics who have an interest in shaping a Church that is welcoming to young adults and, thus, is sustainable for the future. To that end, this document is worth reading because it is a candid yet hopeful explanation of the state of young people, directly from young people themselves. Its greatest strength is its frankness, and its most important message is the hope that lives in every opportunity we as a Church have to engage with, invite, and minister to young people.
The experience of the week most striking to me was the realization of how BIG the Church is. To spend my days with young people from sub-Saharan Africa, from the furthest reaches of Asia—all living lives I can only imagine—was breathtaking. They see the Church through many lenses and live out their faith in many different ways.
The global context of the Pre-Synodal Meeting was profound because it provided much-needed perspective. The issues we find paramount can often be far from the needs of our brothers and sisters. It is easy for all of us to get caught up in our own contexts and the issues that reign supreme in our own minds. But we are a truly catholic (yes, “little c”) church, and so all that we do is inextricably bound up in the reality that our vision must extend beyond the bounds of Connecticut, the Northeast, or the United States. This global perspective certainly presented a challenge in our efforts to write the document, because of the sheer breadth of lived experience that needed to be summarized. It also heartened me to see the threads of unity that bound us all, to realize we shared many of the same concerns and sources of joy.
One such thread related to the role of women in the Catholic Church. I can speak only to my personal experience of the Pre-Synodal meeting, but the role of women came up quite strongly and clearly in both my English-language working group and in the writing committee. After the first and second drafts of the document, I was moved by how clearly the plenary spoke to us on the writing committee about this issue, asking for incisive statements about the role of women in the Church. This was especially relevant to the section on vocation and discernment, because of the challenge young women face in understanding potential ways in which they can share their gifts with the Church. The role of women in the Church is clearly one of the rare issues that transcends geographical location, which to me makes the issue even more important for the Synod Fathers to address. Young people desire to see women in visible roles of authentic leadership in the Church, as was made clear during the feedback given on each draft of the document.
Admittedly, it has been challenging for me to learn that most average Catholics have no idea what a Synod is or that one is taking place at all, let alone a Pre-Synodal Meeting. I feel that the work done that week in Rome was vitally important, but it has been humbling to acknowledge that the world kept spinning. The situation presents an opportunity for evangelization of sorts: to share the magnificence of 300 young people, many of whom know and love Jesus, who came together for this historic moment to speak on behalf of their generation to an ancient institution. Those who were there have the responsibility of sharing with others the hope that was palpable and to enter into conversation—not only about what is written in the document, but about the experiences of young people in the Church moving forward.
It can truly be a banner moment of hope, if we let it be so.
Nicole M. Perone ’16 M.Div. is the Archdiocesan Director of Adult Faith Formation for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford.