Pope picks 8 Filipino participants to youth synod
Pope Francis leads the Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican, October 23, 2015. PAUL HARING/CNS
By Roy Lagarde
September 19, 2018
Manila, Philippines
Pope Francis has chosen eight Filipinos including a young catechist to attend October’s Synod of Bishops on youth together with other Catholic leaders from around the world.
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila, who was elected to the 15-member synod council in 2015, will lead the Philippine delegation composed of three other bishops, 2 priests and a lay person.
Tagle had served as one of the three presidents delegate to the synod general assemblies on the family in October 2015.
The pope has also approved the members elected by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines to represent the CBCP at synod.
The CBCP delegates are Bishop Leopoldo Jaucian of Bangued, chairman of the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Youth (ECY); Bishop Patricio Buzon of Bacolod, ECY Vice Chairman; and Bishop Joel Baylon of Legazpi, former ECY head and current member of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences – Office of Laity and Family.
The synod will meet at the Vatican on October 3 to 28 to discuss “young people, faith and vocational discernment”.
Other participants are Fr. Renato De Guzman of the Office for Pastoral Care of the Don Bosco Educational Center, Fr. Emmanuel Enrico Ayo of the Diocese of Parañaque, who will serve as one of the assistants, and Nicole Anne Perez, a catechist from the Manila archdiocese and who is among the auditors to the synod.
The pope also picked another Filipino, Bishop Pedro Baquero of Kerema diocese, as official delegate for the Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.
The three-week meeting will address various issues on sexuality and gender, the role of women, and the desire for a Church which knows how to listen.
In March this year, over 300 young adult delegates including five Filipinos gathered in Rome, where Pope Francis convened a pre-synod meeting to listen directly to the voice of young people from around the world.
The gathering produced the “instrumentum laboris” or the working document for the upcoming synod.
The synod comes at a critical moment in Pope Francis’ papacy as the crisis over clergy sex abuse continues to roil the Catholic Church.