Post-Synod Interview with facilitator Avril Baigent
The second session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of Bishops was held in October 2024 with the theme "For a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission”.
Avril Baigent, our Co-Founder and Director, was invited to be a facilitator for the session as part of her work with the School for Synodality, and the Diocese of Northampton. Our interview with her post-Synod is full of rich insights into the process and vision to be taken back to our parishes and contexts.
Avril in front of St Peter’s Basilica. Image credit: School for Synodality
Avril, you were invited to be a facilitator back in early autumn, and spent most of October in Rome. How do you feel about the experience, in relation to the rest of your year?
This has truly been one of the stand-out experiences of my life. Partly because it was all such a surprise (I was only asked to take part on 26th August, flying out to Rome on 26th September!), and partly because it was amazing to be part of such a significant moment in the life of the Church.
I learned a lot that will benefit my work for the School for Synodality and my Northampton diocesan role, but I also met some wonderful people and came away convinced that synodality is a good way to be church.
What was a typical day like, as a Synod facilitator in Rome?
I was staying in a convent retreat house up on a hill above the Vatican, so my day often began with a stunning view of St Peter’s! The main work of the Synod Assembly was done in the Paul VI Aula, familiar to anyone who has been to a papal audience, converted into a meeting space with the now-famous round tables. Our prayer was led by the White Fathers most days, and my husband tuned in to Vatican TV every day to catch a glimpse of me.
We worked from 8.45-12.30 and from 4-7.30pm, Monday – Friday and Saturday morning, and there were additional lectures, meetings and prayer services to attend. It was extremely tiring! However we did have some amazing moments in the time off, like a private view of the Sistene Chapel and dinner with the British Ambassador.
What were your direct responsibilities as a facilitator?
I was facilitating English-speaking groups, which were a great representation of the global church, including a deacon from Northern Syria, a Japanese archbishop, an Australian theologian and bishop, a youth worker from Russia, and bishops from across Africa. Not everyone was a native English speaker, so part of my role was to ensure that everyone’s voices could be heard equally.
The work of the month was to produce a final Synod document – quite the ambition given 350 delegates, five languages and a fifty page starting document. We worked in blocks of four days, focusing on sections of the text, proposing deepening's or expressing concerns. There were also opportunities to hear from the entire assembly in General Congregations, when anyone could opt to speak for 3 minutes. Looking through the final document, I can pinpoint moments of conversation around the table and particular interventions. It truly was written by the delegates even if put into final form by the team of writers and translators.
Avril meeting Pope Francis at the beginning of the Synod.
What surprised you about your experience at the 16th assembly this year?
I did know that the Assembly was a very global gathering, but it was still amazing and surprising to experience the diversity – just in the coffee queue, I found myself chatting with the Archbishop of Montreal, an African female theologian, and the head of the Salesian order. This diversity was even more evident in the conversations around table.
One day we had a discussion about migration, which included the full variety of sending and receiving dioceses, together with the head of the dicastery (department) which is responsible for migration in the Vatican. It’s hard to imagine such a conversation taking place anywhere else in such a positive way.
What was your experience like as a lay woman at the Synod?
One of the fascinating aspects of the Synod was the calibre of the women involved. Even as someone who has worked in the Church all my life, I didn’t know that there were so many women as chancellors in dioceses, leading theological commissions and Catholic universities, and working in the Vatican. The women were spread across the delegates, the facilitators and the theologians, and there were a variety of views between them, as you would expect. But I was proud to be part of such an eminent group of women.
A high point of the time away was when the women were invited to a private audience with Pope Francis, who expressed his delight at women's voices being heard as delegates for the first time in a Synod Assembly. I was asked to speak at about my experiences of being a woman at the Synod at an event with the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations (WUCWO) , which I only discovered later, had been live streamed around the world! You can read more about it here >>. I also spoke to my Northampton diocesan women’s group about my experiences, the video can be seen here >>.
A beautiful line from the Final Synod Document’s paragraph on women is “What comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped” (para 60).
Preparing for a synod session in the Vatican’s Paul VI Aula.
Where did you feel the most warmth, during the Synod?
One of the best experiences was the camaraderie among the facilitators. It was very tiring facilitating day after day, and obviously being away for a month was not easy. But there was always someone you could ask questions of, someone to go for an aperitivi with, or just share a joke with. We had a WhatsApp group and there would often be funny messages or encouragement circulating. They are a very experienced group with a real passion for the Church, from around the world. We’re still messaging each other a month later.
Some have queried just how relevant the synod process in Rome is to parishes at the grassroots. Now you have experienced both, what insights can you offer?
People kept saying to me that it was a Western process, just for Vatican geeks. It was nothing like that – the whole world was represented in the interventions, while every group including young people, disabled people, the marginalised, the digital space, those on the peripheries of our communities, environmental issues and the different experiences of women were brought to the Hall. The other assumption was that the final document was already written before we got there – believe me, that’s a long way from the truth!
Speakers at the Bringing the Synod Home event, held in the Jesuit Curia on 23rd October 2024.
Coming back to my work with the School for Synodality and in my diocese, I can say that everything we did in Rome is connected with our community life on the ground. All the time I was there, I was collecting ideas to bring back, and now I’m back, I’m passionate about sharing the Final Synod Document and that month in Rome.
In the final week of the Assembly I ran a workshop with David McCallum SJ and Sandra Chaoul from the Discerning Leadership Programme called Bringing the Synod Home, including speakers from the Phillipines, Senegal and the Caribbean. There is so much good practice already, the work now is to take that to the wider Church community.
The synod process ended with a ‘final document’. What is this exactly, how was the process and what key takeaways do you want people to have?
The document is the concrete form of the conversations that we had over the month, together with a whole set of actions for the Church. It calls for the listening and discerning practices of the past three years to become embedded in our daily life, so that we maintain an openness to the Holy Spirit into the future. Rooted in the resurrection appearances of Jesus, it offers a beautiful image of a resurrection Church, letting down our nets – again – after a long night of fruitless fishing, and this time bringing up an astonishing catch. What enables this to happen is the reconfiguration of many of our ways of being church for mission – as Pope Francis puts it in Evangelii Gaudium, our “customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures”. The Final Synod Document offers ways of doing this, while recognising that this work has already begun around the world.
Now the 2021-2024 section for this process is over, what are the next practical steps people can take for the synodal conversion of the Catholic church?
Avril with Cardinal Grech and fellow facilitators.
The Final Synod Document states that “synodality is a path of spiritual renewal and structural reform that enables the Church to be more participatory and missionary so that it can walk with every man and woman, radiating the light of Christ.” §28.
For me, this means asking ourselves the following questions: are we rooted in prayer and seeking the Holy Spirit? Are we driven by mission? Are we listening to all the voices? Are we transparent and accountable in all we do? We can apply these questions to everything from parish life to catholic organisations, to official structures like dioceses and bishops’ conferences.
For example, we might examine our pastoral council agendas or diocesan budgets – how much of what we do is driven by mission? We might reflect on our meetings – are they rooted in prayer, or start with a quick Our Father? Listening to the voices will make us uncomfortable as we hear new perspectives – are we open to this? Finally, is it clear who is making what decisions, about what areas of our community life?
However, we should not underestimate the challenges of such a level of culture change. We will need new skills, such discernment and facilitation. We will need a new mindset that envisages the Church as the pilgrim people of God, on the journey, not fixed in concrete. And we need an openness to the Holy Spirit, who loves to disturb and surprise us, but who will never leave us when we step out in faith.
