POPE FRANCIS’s three-year process known as the Synod on Synodality has concluded (News, 1 November). Its aim was to encourage conversations where people do not interrupt one another, but listen with deep concentration, in an atmosphere of prayer. Rome’s first Jesuit pope hoped that the outcome of this “attentive listening” would be spiritual renewal, structural reform, and a Church that is more participatory and missionary. The reality, to put it kindly, has been underwhelming.

Delegates from the Synod have returned home in a mood of mild euphoria, talking about exchanging chocolate and laughter with individuals of whom they were once highly suspicious. But the end product has been an expression of such abstract jargon that it is difficult to see what it amounts to in real terms.

Process has been at the heart of the synodal vision. Those fed up with diktats from conservative popes, Francis concluded, would not be better served by fiats from a liberal or progressive one. So, in 2020, he invited lay Catholics to offer views on how the Church should develop. This was a bold move. The laity had hitherto only ever been told by Rome to pray, pay, and obey; their views were of no interest to previous popes.

Lay opinions were synthesised with those of each nation’s bishops to produce working documents for the two-stage Synod. Despite the lament of traditionalists that the Synod had been stacked with progressives, its final document is surprisingly cautious, if not conservative. African bishops, notable for their antipathy to gay people in the Church, have declared themselves “full of joy” at the outcome, while campaigners for a greater place for women in the Church have declared themselves gravely disappointed — perhaps inevitably, since only 54 of the 368 voting delegates were women.

“Our task in the Synod is to live with difficult questions,” England’s newest cardinal, Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP, said in the Synod’s opening reflection (News, 25 October). In fact, Pope Francis bought harmony only by hiving off the most controversial issues to ten study groups outside the Synod process. Resentment over this surfaced when Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the Vatican’s doctrine watchdog, failed to show up to the concluding session on women deacons. “The question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open,” since the discussion to date was “not mature”, he said. The Synod’s final paragraph on the possibility of women deacons received more “No” votes than any other.

Usually, after a synod, a pope writes his own conclusions in a document called an apostolic exhortation. Francis will not do this. Rather, he has declared that the Synod’s conclusions should be implemented. These involve strengthening parish councils, reforming the training of future priests, allowing lay involvement in selecting bishops, expanding ministries, and revising church law to be more transparent and accountable.

Will any of this actually happen? The Synod has given no indications of the necessary institutional mechanism that this would require. Indeed, much will depend on local bishops and priests, many of whom ignored the original request to involve the laity in the initial consultation in 2022. “The earthquake many expected three years ago turned out to be a minor tremor,” one veteran Vatican-watcher has concluded. Perhaps change is on the way. But expect progress to be glacial.