Seven of the nine men are clergy, meaning only two laymen are attending from Oceania.

All participants have voting rights.

As well as the lack of laymen, what also stands out is that with Archbishop Paul Martin, Mr Manuel Beazley and Fr Dennis Nacorda, New Zealand is the only country to have an all-male representation.

Earlier in the synodal process, two New Zealand women helped formulate the final New Zealand response - Mrs Anne Dickinson, Cardinal John Dew's Pastoral Assistant and Dr Therese Lautua, a theologian and researcher at the University of Auckland.

Also of note is that there seems to be little room for representation from Fiji, Tonga and Western Samoa, all of which had significant input to the final document from the 'Oceania continent'.

Fiji actually hosted the final stage of the Federation of Catholic Bishops' of Oceania submission to the Synod.

However, Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania (FCBCO) Bishop Anthony Randazzo of Broken Bay, NSW, has expressed his confidence in the inclusion of 10 non-bishop members from the region in the upcoming Synod of Bishops.

Bishop Anthony Randazzo, who assumed the presidency of FCBCO in February, commended the abundance of qualified and faithful individuals in Oceania who could offer their lived experiences during the two sessions of the Synod of Bishops scheduled for October this year and October next year.

"Our region stands out as one of the most diverse in the world, considering the presence of approximately 20 nations in this corner of the globe," said Randazzo.

"This diversity enriches the Church in Oceania, and I am confident it will contribute significantly to the deliberations at the Synod gatherings in Rome."

Earlier this year, Pope Francis extended an invitation to each of the seven world 'continents' to nominate twenty individuals who have actively contributed to local initiatives for the Synod of Bishops.

From the list of nominees, Pope Francis personally handpicked ten representatives from each region.

The Pope's representative in Australia is former New Zealand Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Charles Balvo, while Archbishop Novatus Rugambwa serves as the Apostolic Nuncio to New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

Attending the Federation of Catholic Bishops' of Oceania Conference was Sr Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops.

Originally a Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis has opened the doors to lay men and women, and the Vatican now simply calls it the Synod 2021 - 2024.

As October approaches, anticipation grows for the Synod, which will bring together clergy, theologians and laity from around the world to address pertinent issues facing the Catholic Church in the contemporary era.

Those attending the Synod from the "Oceania Continent" are:

Australia

• Dr Trudy Dantis - Director of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference's National Centre for Pastoral Research
• Mr John Lochowiak - National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council Chair
• Bishop Shane Mackinlay - Bishop of Sandhurst
• Archbishop Patrick O'Regan - Archbishop of Adelaide
• Mrs Kelly Paget - Chancellor of the Diocese of Broken Bay
• Professor Renee Kohler-Ryan - Head of the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia

New Zealand

• Mr Manuel Bazley - Vicar for Maori in the Auckland Diocese
• Archbishop Paul Martin - Archbishop of Wellington
• Fr Dennis Nacorda - Parish Priest of Levin

Pacific

• Bishop Paul Donoghue - Bishop of Cook Islands
• Sr Mary Angela Perez - Director of Mission Effectiveness Mariana Islands
• Dr Susan Sela - Director of Technical and Further Education University of the South Pacific, Fiji

Papua New Guinea / Solomon Islands

• Bishop Dariusz Kaluza - Bishop of Bougainville
• Ms Grace Wrakia - Pastoral and Teaching roles for De La Salle Brothers

Syro-Malabar Eparchy

• Dr Sijeesh Pullenkunnel - Chancellor of the Syro-Malabar Eparchy of Melbourne

Additional Experts and facilitators

• Dr Sandie Cornish - Practitioner and academic in Catholic Social Teaching
• Br Ian Cribb - Expert in spiritual conversation - Australia
• Adjunct Professor Susan Pascoe - Member of Synod's Methodology Commission - Australia
• Fr Asaeli Rass - Provincial of the Divine Word Missionaries - Australia
• Fr Ormond Rush - Theologian - Australia

Source

• Supplied
• CathNews

"The Vatican's fictional construct, a new continent it calls Oceania, may have been a step too far" a seasoned observer of Church politics told CathNews.

The Vatican's "Oceania Continent" occupies 33% of the planet. It comprises 21 countries, from small island states to large land masses, with a wide range of ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups.

Significant gaps

The Oceania Working Document for the Continental Stage highlights significant gaps in its report.

The Document identifies 'of concern,' the absence from the report of certain groups of people.

Men, young people, migrants, abuse victims, West Papuans and those who do not want to see change were less likely to be heard.

The Document also records that for a range of reasons, the Bishops Conference of the Pacific (CEPAC) could not submit their synthesis document to the process.

It also indicates that some bishops could not attend the continental stage meeting.

The report states the vastness and cultural divergence of the Continent meant some members were systemically excluded.

Among the reasons some members did not take part in the process, the report identifies a lack of access to information, a lack of suitable communications technologies, travel, language difficulties and language disabilities.

To make up for some of these gaps, the report says "advocacy" was implied throughout the process.

"Accordingly, ‘advocacy' was implied throughout the five responses — advocacy for diverse groups of people in the Church or wider society which could not be directly part of a synodal listening, dialogue, discernment and decision-making process," the document says.

Similarity of voices

While the voice of some local churches and groups within them is absent, the similarity of many voices could be heard directly - many themes, issues, and insights emerged as priorities, including:

• Mission - that there be a transition from a maintenance to a mission church.
• The ecological crisis was seen as an urgent existential global issue that particularly impacted the "Oceania Continent"; it should be viewed as a mission field in which the whole Church should be engaged.
• The development of Church teaching on sexuality, diverse sexual relationships, contraception, the situation of the divorced and remarried, intercommunion with other Christian denominations whose Baptism we recognise, priestly celibacy and the restriction of ordination to men.

(While the issue of women's ordination was raised in the Australian response, the New Zealand response noted that "there was no request for the consideration of ordination of women as priests, although one group asked for their [women's] ordination as deacons).

• Becoming more synodal and embedding Synodality as the way of being Church at every level.
• A cultural and structural change in leadership, including shared governance and decision-making.
• Investing in how the faith needs of young people can be met and how young people can be better formed in order for them to better utilise their skills and passions.
• The participation of women in the Church and ensuring the Church continues to listen to those women who do not feel sufficiently recognised.
• Formation of lay people to help them participate more fully in a synodal Church.

Bishops' offer pastoral reflections

By way of comment on the document, the FCBCO bishops offered a pastoral reflection acknowledging that despite the Church appearing in disarray, that it is in these areas of pain that Christ reveals himself.

While acknowledging the document is not a census of all Catholics in Oceania, they identify it as real and as an expression of all those who responded.

They say the document is not a teaching document, but more like a postcard sent home describing where we are today.

They say Synodality will take time both in Oceania and the Universal Church and that they do not want to build a different Church, but renew and revitalise the Church we love.

To this end, the bishops depart from their non-teaching "pastoral reflection" bringing together some of the core issues that emerged - Church, belonging, the place of baptism, reconciliation and eucharist.

"For Catholics, the Eucharist is central.

"Through Baptism, we gain entry to the Eucharistic community gathered at the Table of the Lord.

"With Christ, we as a people are invited to die to self and rise again with Christ as we participate in his sacrificial self-emptying and self-giving.

"The Lord Jesus gives us Himself as food for the journey until we share in the banquet of heaven.

"He gives us priests, whom He calls to have a shepherd's heart to care for their people, proclaim the Word of God, celebrate Eucharist with and for them, and so nourish the Church as she strives to fulfil her mission for the life of the world.

"Similarly, the Sacrament of Penance reunites the sinner with the Eucharistic community."

Source

• Supplied

Recently released was the report of the Federation of Catholic Bishops' of Oceania Conference (FCBOC).

In January, a church group of about twenty representatives from across the Pacific gathered in Melbourne to synthesise the responses from around what the Vatican calls the "Oceania Continent"; the countries of the South Pacific, including Australia.

The group was tasked to bring Oceania's unique perspective to bear on the global synodal process, saying their goal was to look at the global event "through the eyes" of the people of 'the continent'.

CathNews was told the Oceania Continent Synod document was discussed at the recent FCBOC meeting in Suva, but when, through a third party, CathNews asked when the New Zealand Church might see the synodal document she was told it could be published 'anytime between now and some weeks'.

New Zealand's representatives: Fr Dennis Nacorda (Levin), Dr Thérèse Kiely (Auckland) and Mrs Anne Dickinson (Wellington)

Also at the FCBOC meeting was Sr Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops.

She was visiting from Rome.

"It is clear that the Church is unfolding in a local culture, whereas we often have a very Eurocentric vision of the Church," said Becquart.

She was particularly taken by the youthful expression of Church in the South Pacific, commenting it is very different from the 1,500 or 2,000-year-old traditions elsewhere in the world.

"One of the requests was to bring out an Oceanian theology, a sign of the need to anchor the Church in local realities... and the indigenous populations are very present, with celebrations marked by a great sense of inculturation."

"This region is probably also home to the youngest Church in the world, where there are still missionaries. Some islands were evangelised in the 1950s, just before or after the Second Vatican Council.

Sr Nathalie Becquart

"For those of us coming from Rome, we experienced a young Church there. The concerns are not very different from elsewhere, but they are expressed with a different intensity.

"The people in Oceania are experiencing climate change in a very intense way. They have a very strong link with this territory and losing their land means losing their identity. It is terrible. This dynamic of the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor was present in the reflections all week.

"It is clear that the Church is unfolding in a local culture, whereas we often have a very Eurocentric vision of the Church. One of the requests was to bring out an Oceanian theology, a sign of the need to anchor the Church in local realities."

Becquart said she thought it was too early to say how the different 'Oceania Continent' approaches will be integrated into the overall Synod.

"We need to see what emerges from there and elsewhere. The working document that will be developed afterwards will bring out the voice of the Church from the various continents, with what unites them and what differentiates them."

Becquart confirmed that the Synod path is not mapped out in advance.

Source

• La Croix
• NZCBC
• Supplied