Saturday 22 June 2019
Return to Rome from Ariccia and immediately to work
After such a remarkably important week in prayer together at Ariccia on the shores of Lake Albano, the Bishops and I came back by bus to Rome late this morning to take up our residence for the next week at Domus Australia, the Guesthouse of the Archdiocese of Sydney. As expected, Rome is a lot hotter and more humid that Ariccia but fortunately the facilities at the hostel are very pleasant, situated on Via Cernaia not far from the main train station in Rome at Termini. All of us are now here, the several bishops who could not be with us on retreat having joined us. After lunch at a nearby trattoria with several of the Bishops, it was down to work. The President of the Conference, Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane convened our first meeting, an occasion to reflect together on the six National Themes for Discernment that were published on Pentecost Sunday at the service of the Plenary Council of 2020. It was a helpful opportunity to be briefed on the current moment of our journey towards this event by the President of the Plenary, Archbishop Tim Costello of Perth, and to share our observations, insights and questions. Over the next six weeks a ‘Snapshot’ of each National Theme, drawn from the data gathered during the phase of Listening, will be posted on the Plenary Council website, prior to the publication of a full Report on the data at the end of July. Then will begin a new phase of discernment: listening in small, specialist groups, through the Themes, even more deeply to the data along with our attentiveness to the Scriptures and our Tradition, hearing what the Spirit is whispering to us through it all. We are a long way off the formulation of the Agenda for the Plenary, but this second phase we are now entering is a critical one in the process.
The Permanent Committee of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, which acts as the Executive of the Conference, then held its own meeting ahead of the Extraordinary Meeting of the Conference, scheduled for Sunday afternoon. In the meantime the rest of us are ensuring that our black suits and cassocks are all neatly pressed ahead of the week of meetings with the Holy Father and Vatican officials.
Very Rev Dr David Ranson