A transformation is unfolding at nearly half of the parishes in the diocese, as lay leaders and their pastors re-imagine daily parish life and leadership.
They are bringing to life a concept initially championed in the Universal Church by Pope Francis, called synodality, and now affirmed by Pope Leo XIV.
Two events at the Diocese of San Diego in August will highlight that transformation.
On Friday evening, Aug. 21, Sister Nathalie Becquart, will offer a reflection on “Re-Imagining Parish Life in a Synodal Church.” She is the Vatican’s Undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, the office that shapes how the Catholic Church listens, discerns and implements synodality.
The following day, Sister Becquart will speak at the diocese’s third annual synod convocation, addressing clergy and lay leaders participating in the diocese’s initiative to sow synodality at its parishes. A total of 44 are now participating in the two-year-old effort — and counting.
Paulist Father John Hurley, the diocese’s synod facilitator, expects close to 400 people to attend the convocation, to be held at St. Thomas More Parish, including the 23 members of the Diocesan Commission for a Synodal Church.
The commission, launched last spring by Bishop Michael Pham, is primarily made up of pastors and synod coordinators at parishes in each of the diocese’s seven deaneries. Their goal is to share their real-life experiences of implementing a synodal approach in their parishes with fellow pastors, and to help one another in this process.
The final document from the Synod of Bishops, presented in 2024, defined synodality this way:
“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.”
The diocese has been on a synodal journey for a decade, beginning with a Synod on Family Life, convened by then Bishop Robert W. McElroy in 2016.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of that synod. The convocation on Aug. 22 will feature a presentation about the experience of implementing that synod’s recommendations, which included the creation of a diocesan Office for Family Life and Spirituality.
The diocese also held a Synod on Young Adults in 2019. And, in the ensuing years, hosted several rounds of listening sessions at parishes in preparation for the universal Synod on Synodality.
At the beginning of 2024, Cardinal McElroy launched the initiative “Re-Imagining Parish Life and Leadership in a Synodal Church,” starting with 16 pilot parishes.
The goal was to encourage greater participation in the life of the parish, particularly by those who felt excluded, renewing and growing not just the parish, but the Church itself.
Each parish was to identify two goals, one to re-imagine parish life and the other to re-imagine parish leadership. Often, these goals grew out of parish listening sessions.
Then the pastor, supported by a parish synod coordinator and a lay team of parishioners, would develop an action plan to bring the goals to life, using the synodal practices of listening and discerning a path forward together.
Key to this process was an openness to being guided by the Holy Spirit.
By this summer, the number of participating parishes has reached 44 from across the San Diego-Imperial Valley region.
The pastors and lay leaders have shared how working on their goals has positively changed their parishes.
At a synod gathering last Dec. 4, Father Bernardo Lara described the situation at his two parishes in Brawley. Their members were highly polarized along language, social and economic lines, reflecting entrenched attitudes about the other parish’s members.
Using an intentional synodal approach, he said, which included listening sessions that brought people from both parishes together, attitudes began to change.
“The person was not just an idea any longer,” he shared. “It was a person with a face, with a name, with a background, with a family, with a house next to mine.”
The synodal process involved various phases, he continued, each bringing their own successes, including members of both parishes embracing a sense of co-responsibility for what happened at their parish and beyond.
“We started sharing that sense of ‘we’re all in charge of this big boat called Church,’” he said. “And then we moved into another phase, which was evangelization.”
As the synod facilitator, Father Hurley has heard all of these stories, and looks forward to more.
“I think we have a movement happening in the diocese.”
From the Southern Cross
The whole point of synodality — let’s be honest — is to change Church teaching about sexual morality (specifically to gain official approval, whether pastoral or doctrinal, of gay sex) and to introduce the ordination of women as deacons to pave the way for their priestly ordination. That’s the goal of all this talking. They are slow-walking the changes they want to see in the Church so that it will hardly be noticeable when the fait accompli is achieved.
You are witnessing a Church that is dying right before your eyes.
The whole synodal thing bores me to death.
Pope Leo said, “We have to change attitudes before we can think about changing doctrine.”
That should send shivers up your spine.
Reply to August 20, 2026: I hope and pray that your assessment is wrong. Remember what it says in scripture, “that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church.” Put your faith and trust in God no matter what.
You are correct, Alien. But the Truth of Jesus Christ reigns Supreme, for all eternity. Mankind has turned away from Him. The Catholic Church has turned away from Him. But we little followers of Jesus can still vow to be faithful to Him, to Him Alone– until the hour of our death. I am an individual made in the Divine Image of God. God has a Plan for me, for my life, and I shall faithfully follow His excellent Plan, for as long as I live. He has many beautiful rewards promised to His faithful little ones. And He will deliver on all of them. Laugh at the folly of evil in the Church and in the world. I am going to follow Jesus! And that’s that. Period.
Leo’s spokesman,
When did Pope Leo say that?
Reference for Leo saying it:
https://signofthecross.substack.com/p/leo-xiv-on-lgbtq-we-have-to-change
Here is a link to the famous “Crux” interview of Pope Leo by Elise Ann Allen:
https://share.google/yADDXzkGnrFV03clf
I just typed a link to the famous interview of Pope Leo with Crux’s Elise Ann Allen. Not sure I got the right link, though. Here is another one:
https://share.google/yADDXzkGnrFV03cIf
I heard Pope Leo say we had to change attitudes in an English interview, but it did not sound as though he meant we had to give approval to sexual sins, but teach people why sins are sins and judge fairly. It was vague, and could have been taken either way, but sometimes the interviews are taken out of context with one side spinning it their way. I want to hear it for myself in context, not some other person’s spin. If one person is committing adultery, fornication, incest or sodomy and is bashing someone else who is doing the other thing, they are in no position to judge the other person until they stop sinning themselves. All four are going to fall into the pit if they do not, and we all misspeak occasionally.
“Remember that you are Susan, and upon this diocesan synodal council I will build my church,” said Jesus never.
No, you are correct. And…
“You are a traditionalist and upon the Missal of 1962 I will build by Church.”
Or, was it something else?
No, A. Carol Larry, the 1962 Roman Missal is published by the Vatican, by the true Catholic Church. Its Mass is the original, over 1500 years old, dating all the way back to when the Catholic Mass was first codified, standardized for all Christendom, by Pope St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century. This has absolutely nothing at all to do with Mass preferences of Catholics of today, either traditionalists or liberal progressives, in the 21st century. It is a historical fact.
To anonymous replier, historical fact: the 1962 Missal is not the same as the Tridentine Missal. The Mass was modified by Popes Pius XI, Pius XII, and St. John XXIII. And, the Mass of Trent is not quite the same as the Mass of Pope St. Gregory the Great, though it is very similar. You’re entitled to your own opinion or preference, but not your own “facts.”
And, I agree, the Missal of 1962 was published by “the true Catholic Church.” Who do you claim published the current Roman Missal?
Our church is so screwed.
” no one makes a pilgrimage to a synodal process”( see latest infovaticana.com, ‘ la punteria del enemigo’ and hit english translation flag for a wonderful piece of anti- synodality writing on par with Newman and the best). San Diego archdiocese is more interested in pilgrimages to the dying swamp-bed of the Salton Sea while a Eucharistic pilgrimage passes it by heading between Franciscan missions
Anyone with an intellect knows this is absolute drivel.
A younger relative said to me, in despair, about a year ago, that she could not manage to totally follow the Church, or Christ, as she had good social relations, and it would ruin everything, ruin her life. I replied that this was a big fake, these “good social relations” of hers was not honest, not sincere. Your true friends will admire you for being strong and standing up for what is right. You will gain great respect. Those who disagree with you, and are possibly mean to you — are phony, fake friends, to begin with. Get rid of them. In the end, you will be rejoicing at your great treasure in Christ– and they will be shattered, broken, shamed, in tears before God— betrayed by the Evil One.
Reply to Follow Christ, laugh at those who won’t: In John 14:6 “Jesus Christ states: I am the way the truth and the life.”
Christ did not invent the term, “Synodality,” and He did not establish His Church on its man-made, ridiculous principles. “Synodality” is not in the Bible nor in the Catholic Catechism.
Whenever you hear the word, “re-imagining”, run the other way.
As Diana Montagna noted, “Auxiliary Bishop Rob Mutsaerts of ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands published an open letter to Pope Leo XIV on August 13, 2026, asking for an end to the ongoing permanent implementation phase of the Synod on Synodality.”