Who is working on the working document?
The Vatican published the names of the 22 people who will contribute to the first stage of the writing process of this document. Only four of the listed participants are the same “experts” who helped to write the working document to guide the continental stage of the synod last fall: Australian Archbishop Timothy Costelloe; Italian Monsignor Piero Coda; Australian Professor Susan Pascoe; and Mauricio Lopez, head of pastoral action for the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM).
Among the people working on the new synod document are U.S. Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas; Sister Nathalie Becquart; and Father Giacomo Costa, SJ, who served as the communications secretary for the Amazon synod.
The two other bishops contributing to the writing process are Bishop Luis Marín de San Martín, the synod’s undersecretary, and Bishop Lucio Muandula of Xai-Xai, Mozambique.
In addition to Becquart and Pascoe, four other women are taking part in the drafting meeting. Anna Rowlands, a professor of Catholic social thought at Durham University in the U.K., and Myriam Wijlens, a professor of canon law at the University of Erfurt in Germany, are participating, as are Sister Shizue Hirota, a Mercedarian Missionary from Japan, and Franciscan Sister Marie-Kolbe Zamora from Texas.
Laymen working on the document include Italian Paolo Foglizzo, an editor for the Jesuit monthly journal Aggiornamenti Sociali, and Thierry Bonaventura, the communication manager for the General Secretariat of the Synod of the Bishops.