As its Latin wording implies, the Instrumentun Laboris (IL) is first and foremost a working tool for the members of the Second Session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. This also justifies its language and the use of theological notions and categories in some of its parts. A theological subsidy, soon to be published, will facilitate its reading and allow for a deeper understanding of the theological notions and categories used.
It stems from the reflections that the Bishops' Conferences, the Oriental Catholic Churches and other international ecclesial realities, as well as the reports presented by the parish priests during the three-day work meeting of the Parish Priests for the Synod, have carried out around the Synthesis Report of the First Session (4-29 October 2023) in the light of the indications given by the General Secretariat of the Synod through the document Towards October 2024. The IL thus articulates the syntheses received in order to encourage the Assembly's reflection on the question at the heart of the October assembly How to be a Synodal Church in Mission.
The IL is not a magisterial document, nor a catechism: it is meant to be a working tool of the XVI Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. Nor is it a text that offers prefabricated answers, nor a document that intends to address all the issues related to the need to be increasingly "synodal in mission". It is a document, bearing the fruit of listening, discernment and reflection on Synodality that has matured in the course of the synodal process. It is a basic text, which is both articulated and essential, conceived above all as a support to the method with which the Assembly will be called to work. It is an instrument meant to encourage prayer, dialogue, discernment, and the maturing of a consensus starting from some convergences which matured along the way in view of the delivery to the Holy Father of a Final Document of the XVI Assembly.