Sexuality, death, corruption, drug-trafficking, porn, video-games, migration, war, friendship and disabilities are only some of the issues that bishops from all over the world are planning to discuss in a summit in Rome this October, which will focus on youth, their faith and vocation.

“Young people feel a lack of harmony with the Church,” says the document released on Tuesday, ahead of the Synod of Bishops on youth. “It seems that we don’t understand the vocabulary, and therefore also the needs, of the young.”

The instrumentum laboris, or working document, presented in Rome on Tuesday is the result of several previous steps, including an online questionnaire answered by thousands of young people from around the world, as well as a gathering of the youth that took place in Rome earlier this year. The document will serve as the basis for the discussions the bishops will have in October.

“Some LGBT young people, through their contributions to the Secretary of the Synod, wish to ‘benefit from a greater closeness’ and experience greater care from the Church, while some bishops’ conferences question what to propose to ‘young people who … decide to constitute homosexual couples who, above all, want to remain close to the Church,” the instrumentum says.

Those who are against Church teaching on controvesrial issues such as abortion and contraception “still want to continue to be part of the Church and demand more clarity on it.” As a consequence, those in charge are asked to “confront, in a concrete way, controversial arguments such as homosexuality and the issues of gender, over which the young already argue with freedom and with no taboo.”

Addressing the fact that in some parts of the world youth are leaving the Church “in great numbers,” the Instrumentum laboris says that it’s “crucial” to understand why, stating that among the reasons already identified are “indifference and lack of listening” from the Church, and the fact that “many times the Church seems to be too severe and often associated to an excessive moralism.”

Full story at Crux.