Vatican City - In recent hours the members of the Sacred College of Cardinals have received the letter in which the Dean, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, sets out the programme for the forthcoming consistory. The document outlines the content and timetable of an imminent gathering, scheduled for 26, 27 and 29 June.
Re begins by explaining the purpose of the meeting, modelled - he writes - on the experience “already tried out at the previous meeting”: a space for mutual listening, discernment and common reflection on several questions of importance for the life and mission of the Church in the present time. The Holy Father, the letter states, wishes to “gather the experience and counsel” of the members of the College and, at the same time, to be able to count on their active support in the various places where they serve the Church. Hence the hope that the work will take place “in a climate of listening, freedom and parrhesia”.
The sessions will be structured around four main themes, spread over the course of the days.
The first session will take the form of a shared meditation beginning from the international situation. In a climate of prayer, the cardinals are invited to allow what is being experienced in the various parts of the world and in the local Churches to emerge, along two questions: which sufferings, tensions and questions are today weighing most heavily upon peoples and ecclesial communities, and which signs of hope, fidelity to the Gospel and possible reconciliation it seems important to bring to common listening.
The second and third sessions will be devoted to the encyclical Magnifica humanitas. The second will begin from the fifth chapter, “The culture of power and the civilisation of love”, with particular reference to paragraphs 182-192. Faced with a culture marked by polarisation, violence and growing conflict, the text recalls that “peace is not one issue among others, but a condition of the universal common good and a test of the moral maturity of peoples” (n. 182). The exchange will touch closely upon the experience of those who come from territories marked by war and will invite the cardinals to reflect on how to reaffirm today “the overcoming of the theory of the ‘just war’, too often invoked to justify any war” (n. 192).
The third session, beginning from the perspective of “building in the good” recalled in the introduction and conclusion of the document, is intended to explore the encyclical’s invitation to read the transformations of our time in the light of the Gospel and to orient the human desire for happiness towards integral human development.
The final session will be devoted, first, to updating the members of the College on the process of implementing the Synod, beginning from the recent document towards the Synodal Assemblies 2027-2028: stages, criteria and tools for preparation. This will be followed by a time of open dialogue with the Holy Father, with interventions lasting three minutes.
Recalling the experience of the consistory last January, the Dean expresses the hope for adequate preparation, “not only through careful consideration of the questions”, but also and above all through prayer and a renewed listening to the life of the Churches, so that each cardinal’s contribution “is all the more fruitful the more it arises from living contact with the People of God”.
As for the logistics, Re specifies that the consistory will take place on 26 and 27 June in the Paul VI Hall and in the Synod Hall, and will conclude on 29 June in St Peter’s Basilica, when the Holy Father will preside at Holy Mass for the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, bless the pallia and impose them on the new metropolitan archbishops. The letter also reiterates - “as previously indicated” - that no concelebrated Eucharist is planned for Sunday 28 June.
The letter concludes by entrusting this time of preparation to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, with the Dean’s renewed thanks for the service of the cardinals and the assurance of his remembrance in prayer.
fr.F.C.
Silere non possum