Dear Father,
Thank you for coordinating the synodal listening session that took place in your parish. All the parish listening sessions have now been completed. In total, over 1100 parishioners took part in the sessions. Over 3500 people have also made submissions via the online questionnaires. The age range of those who have engaged with the process has been from teenagers to parishioners in their 80s. The online questionnaire will remain live until 11 February. All of these submissions will be used to formulate the diocesan submission to the Bishops’ Conference as part of the preparatory work for the Synod of Bishops in October 2023. This completes the first phase of our synodal process. Details of the next phase, our own diocesan process, will be outlined by Bishop Marcus in the next Ad Clerum.
A verbatim report of the submissions made during the listening session in your parish is linked to the parish website. It is up to each parish priest to decide how best to make this available to parishioners. It may also be of use in helping to identify pastoral priorities as we begin to move forward from the pandemic. The report gives the number of people who attended the meeting along with the approximate age range of those in attendance. Where more than one person agreed with a statement, that is indicated either by the number of people who agreed or a number of ticks. We will also publish reports for each deanery which, while not identifying any single parish, will be a summary of the reports from each parish in the deanery. Again, our sincere thanks for coordinating, supporting and publishing this phase of the process.
With every good wish,
Jessica Wilkinson, Fr Martin Kelly & Coordinators
Click here for the results of St Joseph’s Listening Project