After 40 members of the diocese’s Hispanic community gathered at the St. Benedict Joseph Labre Church rectory on Dec. 7, 2021, Mayra Alvarez said those in attendance left excited for a future full of collaboration between the laity and newly installed Bishop Robert Brennan.
“[Everybody was excited] that we started this because we believe that with this we are going to be walking together and we’re going to be listening and getting out of our doubts together,” Alvarez told The Tablet at the time.
The meeting wasn’t random or a one-off. It was one of the diocese’s first gatherings as part of the global Synod on Synodality — a process of dialogue and listening promulgated by Pope Francis. Beginning in October 2021, the synod was a four-year undertaking that included dialogue and listening sessions between Catholic bishops, religious, and laity at the local, national, and international levels.
The theme, “synodality,” literally means “walking together.” In a speech opening the process, Pope Francis noted that the synod is an opportunity to move structurally toward a synodal Church — “an open square where all can feel at home and participate.”
The synod was unprecedented, bringing together more than 350 bishops, priests, deacons, male and female religious, and laity from around the world for each of its two general assemblies in Rome in 2023 and 2024. It also ushered in a level of co-responsibility in Church governance that hadn’t been seen before.
It was one of the defining moments of Pope Francis’ papacy.
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“There’s a common theme that runs through a lot of what Pope Francis does,” Bishop Brennan told the Tablet. “He calls on us to walk together with one another, to listen care fully to one another, to pay attention to one another, and all together to look for that presence of Jesus walking
among us, and to find our strength with him.”
He added, “So with synodality, paying attention means listening carefully, paying attention means noticing the needs and the sufferings and the burdens people might be feeling, and paying attention that somebody might have a wisdom for you.”
The Diocese of Brooklyn held more than 20 synod listening sessions, including at least one with each of its 22 deaneries, each of which is made up of multiple parishes that are geographically close to one another.
“The engagement of the laypeople in the parishes was so rich,” Sister Maryann Lopiccolo, a Sister of Charity-Halifax and the diocese’s episcopal delegate for religious, told The Tablet. “One of the strong responses that we got through our meetings was the people were so happy to be
included. They said, ‘Nobody has ever asked us before what we think.’ ”
Sister Maryann coordinated the synod process in the Diocese of Brooklyn alongside Father Joseph Gibino, the pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Church in Brooklyn Heights and the diocese’s vicar for evangelization and catechesis.
Along the same lines as Sister Maryann, Father Gibino highlighted the collaboration that took place as part of the synod process, which will continue to produce both practical and spiritual benefits in the diocese in the years ahead.
“I’m very big on the word ‘collaboration,’ and what the synod did was provide us an opportunity to generate a model of collaboration,” Father Gibino told The Tablet. “It really became a worldwide listening session at all the levels that had to my knowledge never really been undertaken that systematically before. That is just great.”
Bishop Brennan noted that — as has long been a priority of Pope Francis’ — the process really sought to make sure many different voices were heard and that the voices included those of people who don’t normally have that opportunity. “It got people to re-engage in conversation, and hopefully it’ll get us to invite other people to be a part of the Church and to share their experiences and their needs because Christ is the answer to every need and I think it reinvigorated … a lot of what we’re doing [in the diocese],” Bishop Brennan said.
Beyond the process itself, Sister Maryann also credits Pope Francis for making it work.
“I think his example of being one of us, just with extra responsibilities and leadership, but he always comes back to ‘I’m no different from you,’ and I think that persona that he gives us is what’s inviting,” Sister Maryann said. “I really think that because it was Pope Francis who initiated this, it has been successful.”