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 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod and XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops Scott 1596-1597 (2015) On September 2, 2015, Vatican City issued two stamps focused on the Synod of Bishops. The first (Scott 1596) commemorated the establishment of the Synod in 1965, and the second (Scott 1597) was issued in conjunction with the 14th Synod being held in 2015. The Synod of Bishops is a global advisory body to the pope which allows Catholic bishops the opportunity to render "cooperative assistance" to the pope. As described in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, it is a "a group of bishops who have been chosen from different regions of the world and meet at fixed times to foster closer unity between the Roman Pontiff and bishops, to assist the Roman Pontiff with their counsel in the preservation and growth of faith and morals and in the observance and strengthening of ecclesiastical discipline, and to consider questions pertaining to the activity of the Church in the world."First proposed in 1959, the Synod of Bishops was eventually established during the final session of the Second Vatican Council on September 15, 1965, when Pope Paul VI issued an Apostolic Letter which officially created the Synod of Bishops. The Synod is a permanent committee with offices in the Vatican, but it is not part of the Curia. The Synod convenes at the pleasure of the pope and holds assemblies that are classified as either 'general' (for matters that concern the universal Church) or 'special' (to address matters of a specific geographical area). The general assemblies are either 'ordinary' (held at fixed intervals) or 'extraordinary' (held to address urgent issues). The stamp issued for the 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, shown above, pictures Pope Francis with a family of four. The theme of the Synod was "The vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world." Pope Francis issued the post-Synodal exhortation Amoris laetitia ('The joy of love') in early 2016 which addressed the pastoral care of families. To date, the Synod has met in Ordinary General Assembly 16 times, the most recent being the three-year Synod on Synodality (formally titled "For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission"), which ran from 2021 to 2024. There have been three Extraordinary General Assemblies (in 1969, 1985 and 2014), and eleven Special Assemblies (convened from 1980 to 2019). REFERENCES: |
