The schedule for the June 26-27 Extraordinary Consistory of Cardinals — a meeting of cardinals from around the world with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican — includes sessions focusing on the Pontiff’s recent encyclical, debates over what constitutes a just war, and the implementation of the Synod on Synodality.
Rome-based Catholic journalist Diane Montagna reported June 4 that the schedule was explained by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, in a letter sent June 3 and obtained and published by the Italian blog Messa in Latino.
Montagna published a working English translation of Cardinal Re’s letter, which explains that the sessions will be centered on four themes. She noted that liturgy is not on the formal schedule as a topic, but it could be brought up by cardinals during the opening discussions or the first session.
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Cardinal Re wrote that the first session will be “a shared meditation on the international situation.” In a prayerful atmosphere, the cardinals will be able “to bring before the Lord what we are experiencing in the different parts of the world and in the local Churches,” he stated.
“The sharing will be guided by two questions,” the cardinal wrote: “What sufferings, tensions, and questions are today affecting with greatest force the peoples and ecclesial communities entrusted to your care? What signs of hope, fidelity to the Gospel and possible reconciliation do you consider important to place before our common reflection?”
Montagna noted that the session seems to have a wide enough scope to allow cardinals to raise issues such as the Priestly Society of St. Pius X’s planned episcopal ordinations, set for July 1 in Switzerland.
Cardinal Re stated in his letter that the following two sessions will focus on studying Pope Leo’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, especially Chapter 5’s section focusing on peace as a “prerequisite for the universal common good and a test of the moral maturity of peoples” amid polarization and violence.
He wrote that the discussion will raise awareness of the painful reality of these struggles affecting many of the cardinals, especially those in war-torn regions. The discussion, he added, will also challenge the conditions that “are re-emerging that weaken the possibility of reconciliation and coexistence.”
“In particular, we shall be invited to reflect on how best to reaffirm today ‘that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated,’” he wrote, quoting paragraph 192 of the encyclical, “and what concrete paths might help peoples and Christian communities to safeguard and build peace.”
The third session will consider Magnifica Humanitas’ call to view the modern world’s developments in the context of the Gospel and point human longing “for happiness and fulfilment toward integral human development,” he wrote.
The last session will update the cardinals on the implementation of the Synod on Synodality and allow them each an opportunity to give a three-minute intervention and dialogue with Pope Leo.
Cardinal Re encouraged the cardinals to prepare for the meeting by thinking about the scheduled topics, praying, and remaining attentive to the life of their local churches.
“The contribution of each Cardinal is, in fact, all the more fruitful insofar as it arises from living contact with the People of God,” he wrote, “with their hopes, their questions, and also their struggles.”
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