Germany: a national synodal assembly for 2027, the nuncio recalls Roman unity

Meeting in autumn plenary assembly at Fulda, closed this 1 October, the bishops of Germany announced the holding of a national synodal assembly in the second half of 2027, intended to prepare the “ecclesial assembly” planned at Rome in 2028. From its opening on 28 September, the same gathering had heard the new apostolic nuncio warn against the temptation to “chart a separate path for the local Church.”

The Church is one, and her unity is not a federation. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that she is one as a single body under one visible head, the successor of Peter, to whom Christ said: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

A particular Church that gives itself its own doctrines and its own disciplines against the Apostolic See ceases to render what it owes to unity; it remakes, under a new name, the Gallican and Febronian error that the popes condemned. Pius VI, in Auctorem fidei, reproved the Synod of Pistoia for claiming to reform the Church through a local assembly arrogating to itself what belongs to the magisterium alone. The Vatican Council, in Pastor aeternus, defined that the primacy of Peter is the perpetual principle and visible foundation of this unity.

The president of the episcopal conference presented a national synodal team in which one finds the figures of the former presidium of the “Synodal Way” and of the synodal committee, alongside the president of the Central Committee of German Catholics. This “Synodal Way,” a reform process led for three years by the German bishops, called for the blessing of same-sex couples and the ordination of women.

It had also asked that qualified laymen be allowed to preach at the Mass of Sundays and feasts; the bishops had approved this in February, but the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments refused the request on 23 June. As for the “synodal conference” that they wish to erect as a permanent organ, composed of twenty-seven diocesan bishops, twenty-seven representatives of the Central Committee and twenty-seven other faithful, its statutes still await the approval of the Holy See: its constitutive session, first set for November 2026, is postponed sine die for want of Rome’s consent.

The nuncio, for his part, recalled that Rome “is the visible center and the guarantor of the unity of the universal Church, to which the Church in Germany also belongs,” that no local Church is “more or less Church than another,” and that the office of Peter and the Eucharist “preserve the Church from becoming a mere federation of separated communities, or even an NGO with a Christian veneer.” Synodality, he warned, “can never be the affair of isolated groups while others are left aside.”

We do not judge the outcome, but the acts. An assembly may deliberate; it cannot make the faith received from Peter become negotiable. Where a particular Church wishes to legislate against Roman discipline, it labors not for communion but for division.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the Church, her unity and the primacy of Peter. Saint Matthew XVI, 18 (Vulgate). Pius VI, constitution Auctorem fidei (1794), against the Synod of Pistoia. Vatican Council, constitution Pastor aeternus (1870), on the primacy of the Roman Pontiff.