Pope Francis joins leaders of the assembly of the Synod of Bishops for prayer before a working session in the Vatican›s Paul VI Audience Hall October 20, 2023. Photo: CNS/Lola Gomez After a strongly negative response from several thousand users, the Vatican quickly took down an online poll last week on the concept of “synodality”, which is at the heart of Pope Francis’s high-profile consultation process set to conclude in October with a Synod of Bishops in Rome.
Published the morning of July 25, the poll asked the question, “Do you believe that synodality as a path of conversion and reform can enhance the mission and participation of all the baptised?” It offered either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as a response.
The poll was published by the official accounts for the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops office on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Facebook. These type of social media polls generally last for 24 hours, and as time went by, the answer ‘no’ quickly began to rack up far more votes than the answer ‘yes’ .
A screenshot taken by Spanish-language news site Info Vaticana, which followed participation in the online poll for the 24 hours it was up, at one point showed that 88% of participants in the poll on X had selected ‘no’ , while just 12% had selected ‘yes’ as their response.
Results
According to Info Vaticana, the ‘no’ option on X sat steadily between 85-90% for the entire 24 hours the poll was up. However, with around 10 minutes left to go, the poll had been removed from both X and Facebook, with comments and responses to it on both platforms largely negative. With seven minutes left for the poll, 6,938 people had voted on X, while on Facebook less than 800 had cast a vote.
The Vatican’s office for the Synod of Bishops did not respond to a Crux request for comment on why the poll was taken down. The potentially embarrassing response for the Vatican comes as the Church is gearing up for the final session of Pope Francis’s controversial Synod of Bishops on Synodality, a global multi-year process involving consultation at the local level which many believe is a legacy-defining event for Pope Francis.
The ‘Synod on Synodality’ was a difficult sell for many faithful, as the concept of ‘synodality’ was abstract and difficult to define”
Formally opened by Pope Francis in October 2021, the Synod of Bishops on Synodality is titled, ‘For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission’, and is a multi-stage process that has included consultations at the local, continental, and universal levels, with the first of two Rome-based month-long meetings occurring in October 2023. A second Rome-based discussion will be held from October 2-27, bringing the process to a close.
From the beginning, the ‘Synod on Synodality’ was a difficult sell for many faithful, as the concept of ‘synodality’ was abstract and difficult to define. Still a difficult concept to define for many, ‘synodality’ is generally understood to refer to a collaborative and consultative style of management in which all members, clerical and lay, participate in making decisions about the Church’s life and mission.
Aim
Organisers have repeatedly insisted that the exercise is aimed at making the Church a more open and welcoming place, driven less by a clerical power-structure and more on collaborative leadership.
However, the process became controversial when reports based on local consultation appeared touching on issues such as married priests, women’s ordination and the welcome of LGBTQ+ individuals.
The Pope opted to form various working groups in the Roman Curia dedicated to studying these and other topics”
These topics were included in the official working document, called Instrumentum Laboris, for last year’s October synod discussion, and they were among the most emotional and contested points of discussion.
When the final summarising document of last year’s discussion was published, the references to these topics were vague, and there was no consensus. When Instrumentum Laboris for this year’s October discussion was published earlier this summer, these issues were practically absent.
Instead, the Pope opted to form various working groups in the Roman Curia dedicated to studying these and other topics, allowing, organisers have said, the discussion to focus on the implementation of synodality, rather than getting bogged down or sidetracked with single issues.
Criticism
After pulling the online poll, the Vatican has received blowback from some who bemoan a lack of transparency and accuse officials of acting against the very process they are trying so hard to sell.
One Catholic television and streaming site, Catholic Sat, responded to the decision to take the poll down in an ironic public post on X, saying, “In the name of true Synodality, why delete the tweet? This goes against everything Pope Francis has been trying to do on this Synodal Journey of Synodality to the Synod in October on Synodality
It is unclear who participated in the social media poll, and precisely what motivated the strongly negative response”
“If 7,001 people voted and the result was the other way round this tweet would not have been deleted. Have some credibility and stand by your convictions, you either want to hear people’s opinions or you don’t,” the post said.
It is unclear who participated in the social media poll, and precisely what motivated the strongly negative response.