Pope Francis invites us all to participate in a three-year worldwide process. The road to the Synod of Bishops 2023 has been officially opened by Pope Francis in Rome on October 9-10, 2021 and the following weekend in the dioceses around the world. In the following phases the dioceses, associations like Kolping and finally the Bishops’ Conferences will be involved before the process leads to the actual Synod of Bishops in Rome in October 2023.

In different places of the world, since the beginning of the process, we have seen that Kolping Families and Diocesan Kolping associations as well as representatives of National Kolping associations have participated in the debates about the future of the Church. We are glad and very grateful for this.

The Vatican has also asked the representatives of international organizations and associations to give feedback on the Vademecum and the preparatory document. The International Executive Board of KOLPING INTERNATIONAL discussed and revised a document prepared in the General Secretariat and finally approved it at its summer session 2022.
Here you can download the document that we sent to the Synod Secretariat.

We hope that it shows our KOLPING spirit: we are a vital part of the Church. We invite you to forward this document to your local bishops or national bishops’ conferences. You are also welcome to take elements from it and make them your own contribution to your local church. We are grateful that the perspectives from Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa have been included in the deliberations on this text and that we can thus make a true world-church contribution to this Synodal Process towards the World Synod of Bishops in 2023.

The International Executive Board is happy to receive your questions, comments or remarks on this document. Feel free to contact the General Secretary Dr. Markus Demele directly with any feedback under info@kolping.net.

We also ask you to continue to accompany the coming months of the Process in prayer and to engage intensively with the documents published by the Synod Secretariat. The further Process provides that feedback can also be given on those documents.

Dear Kolping Sisters and Kolping Brothers all over the world, we want to make a contribution to strengthen the element of synodality and the spirit of community in our Church. Let us do this together in our home places and in our local churches.

Background information, documents on the Synodal Way

At the 34th International Convention of KOLPING INTERNATIONAL at the end of September 2023, the 152 delegates from 43 countries also dealt with the question: What can and should a synodal Church look like? What experiences can Kolping bring from the association into this ecclesiastical process? The delegates worked out in small groups which wishes they have for a synodal Church. For this purpose, each group recorded a video.