The gathering will function as “a space for mutual listening, discernment, and shared exploration of certain issue,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said.
Several working sessions and four themes ranging from war to synodality are planned for the next consistory convened by Pope Leo XIV.
From reflection on the international situation to a possible “updating” of the doctrine of just war, to a discussion of the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas to the steps of the synodal process, the cardinals are called upon for broad discussions in multiple sessions. The plans were reported Thursday by Vatican News.
The themes were outlined by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dean of the College of Cardinals, in a letter sent to all cardinals on June 3. The extraordinary consistory, the second convoked by Leo XIV, will be held June 26–27.
Re emphasized in the letter — which EWTN News has seen in the original — that the consistory “is intended, above all, to be a space for mutual listening, discernment, and shared exploration of certain issues relevant to the life and mission of the Church in the present time.”
The pope “wishes to gather the experience and advice of the members of the College of Cardinals and, at the same time, to be able to count on the active help and support of each in the various places and responsibilities in which they serve the Church.”
Re wrote that “it will be important for our joint work to take place in a climate of listening, freedom, and parrhesia, so as to foster shared discernment on the issues we will be called upon to address.”
Re described the first session as “a shared meditation starting from the international situation.” He emphasized that “in a climate of prayer, we will be invited to let emerge, before the Lord, what we are experiencing in different parts of the world and in the local Churches.”
Two questions will guide the reflection: “What sufferings, tensions, and questions are most pressingly affecting the peoples and ecclesial communities entrusted to your care today? What signs of hope, of fidelity to the Gospel, and of possible reconciliation do you think it is important to bring to common listening?”
The encyclical Magnifica Humanitas will be the focus of the second and third working sessions. In particular, in the second session, the cardinals will be called to reflect on Chapter 5 of the encyclical and to discuss the themes of peace as a “condition for the universal common good” (No. 182 of Magnifica Humanitas).
Cardinals will be asked to “become aware of how this reality painfully affects the experience of many of you, particularly those who come from war-torn territories, and at the same time challenges other contexts, where languages, logics, and practices are reemerging that weaken the possibility of reconciliation and coexistence.”
A particular focus will be on the concept of just war, and on “what concrete ways can help Christian peoples and communities preserve and build peace.”
The third session will ask the cardinals to deepen the encyclicalʼs invitation to read the transformations of our time in the light of the Gospel, as called for by Magnifica Humanitas.
A fourth session will be divided into two parts: an update on the synodʼs implementation process and then a period of “free dialogue between the members of the college and the Holy Father, with three-minute interventions.”
Re said he hopes for “adequate preparation for the meeting, not only through careful consideration of the issues to be addressed but also and above all through prayer and renewed attention to the life of the Churches entrusted to his pastoral care.”
The consistory will conclude with Mass on June 29, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, when the pope will impose the pallia on the new metropolitan archbishops.The gathering will function as “a space for mutual listening, discernment, and shared exploration of certain issue,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said.
This article was originally published by EWTN News English.
