Vatican City – On February 6, Pope Francis appointed two new secretaries to the Vatican’s office of the Synod of Bishops, who gave an Augustinian priest and a Xavierian sister the task of being the second leaders of the department.
Spanish Fr. Luis Marín de San Martín and the French Nathalie Becquart will be the synodal office’s first double secretary since its inception in 1967.
Although the Vatican bulletin announcing the move listed the two synod appointments together, it also said that Francis had chosen to make San Martín a bishop.
The office of the Synod of Bishops is primarily responsible for helping to organize synod meetings, which bring hundreds of Catholic bishops to Rome every few years to discuss topics chosen by the pope.
The status of women participating in the meetings has emerged as a matter of debate over the past few years. Although women were appointed as non-voters as auditors or experts at synods, no one has yet served as a full-fledged voting member.
Cardinal Mario Grech, head of the Synod’s office, apparently suggested in an interview with the internal outlet Vatican News after the new appointments that Becquart would now be a voting member at future synods.
“With the nomination of Sr. Nathalie Becquart and her possibility to participate in the voting, a door is opened,” Grech said according to the original Italian version of the interview.
However, the Vatican’s English translation of the interview seems to soften Grech’s language, with the cardinal mentioning “the possibility that she will participate with the right to vote.”
San Martín is a theologian who did his doctoral work on the ecclesiology of Pope John XXIII. He served as assistant general of his order and as president of the Roman Augustinian Spirituality Institute.
Becquart is a former director of the French professional office of the bishops, was an organizer for the 2018 synod on youth and has been a consultant for the synod office since May 2019.
Francis held four synods during his eight-year papacy, the last of which was the 2019 regional convention for the Amazon region of nine countries. The next one, which focuses on synodality, is scheduled for October 2022.
Theologian Luigi Gioia praised the pope’s appointment of Becquart as one of the two secretaries.
“Synodality is at the heart of Pope Francis’ ministry and is crucial to this legacy,” Gioia, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, told NCR. “That is why the appointment of Sr. Nathalie Becquart is all the more important.”
“However, the recognition of this should not blind us to the fact that we are far from a rehabilitation of the Church as the people of God who … love Pope Francis so much,” the theologian said. The representation of laymen and women at the synod ‘remains insignificant’, Gioia added.