Pope Leo opens first consistory with strong emphasis on synodality, Vatican II

[Stone]

Pope Leo opens first consistory with strong emphasis on synodality, Vatican II
Sources told LifeSiteNews that key roles in the opening phases of the consistory were assigned to figures closely aligned with the approach of Pope Francis.



Pope Leo XIV celebrates mass at the Beirut waterfront on December 2, 2025, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Jan 7, 2026
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews [slightly adapted, not all hyperlinks included from original]) — Pope Leo XIV opened his first extraordinary consistory with an agenda centered on synodality, liturgy and the legacy of the Second Vatican Council.

On Wednesday, January 7, Pope Leo began the first extraordinary consistory of his pontificate at the Vatican, convening cardinals from around the world in the Paul VI Hall and the New Synod Hall to reflect together, advise the Pope, and discuss key themes like synodality and liturgy through a program centered on small working groups and plenary interventions.

In his general audience held earlier the same day, Leo said that the Second Vatican Council “has helped us to open ourselves to the world and to grasp the changes and challenges of the modern age in dialogue and shared responsibility,” adding “we must still more fully realize ecclesial reform in a ministerial key.”

According to details published by Il Giornale, registration for participating cardinals began at midday Tuesday in the atrium of the Paul VI Hall. The first working session formally opened at 3:30 p.m. in the New Synod Hall with a moment of common prayer, followed by an address from the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, and introductory remarks by the Pope.

The consistory is organized into three sessions over two days. The first session concluded at 6:45 p.m. with a papal address and prayer. On Thursday morning, the cardinals are scheduled to celebrate Mass at the Altar of the Chair in St Peter’s Basilica before beginning the second session, which includes reports from working groups and a limited period for discussion scheduled for midday. After a communal lunch with the Pope, the third and final session begins at 3:15 p.m. The consistory is set to close at 6:45 p.m. with a concluding papal address and the chanting of Te Deum.

The working method relies heavily on small discussion groups, from which collective reports will be presented to the assembly. This format mirrors the one adopted during the 2022 meeting of cardinals on the reform of the Roman Curia. At that time, the use of small groups rather than extended plenary interventions was a point of concern for some members of the College, as it limited opportunities for individual cardinals to address the entire body. The groups were organized primarily by language, a criterion that drew mixed reactions.

The initial convocation letter sent on November 7, 2025, by Cardinal Re did not specify the use of working groups, and cardinals reportedly received the detailed program only shortly before the consistory began.

Free interventions — once central to older consistories — have been reduced now to less than 60 minutes in the second session and approximately 45 minutes in the third. Internal Vatican sources told LifeSiteNews this organizational model has generated “significant discontent” among several cardinals who fear it restricts open discussion.

Sources also told LifeSiteNews that key roles in the opening phases of the consistory were assigned to figures closely aligned with the theological and pastoral approach of Pope Francis. Messa in Latino identified them as Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe O.P., who was scheduled to deliver the opening meditation at 3:30 p.m.; Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, moderator of the second session; and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, moderator of the third session. These three cardinals belong to the faction within the progressive wing of the College closest to Francis’ sensibilities, reflecting an apparent continuity with the previous pontificate.

Hours before entering the consistory, Pope Leo addressed approximately 7,000 faithful during the first general audience of the year in the Paul VI Hall, as reported by Vatican News. He announced a new cycle of catecheses entitled The Second Vatican Council through its Documents, aimed at rediscovering “the beauty and importance of this ecclesial event” and encouraging its practical implementation.

In his address, the Pope highlighted the Council’s vision of the Church as a “mystery of communion” and referred to its liturgical reform, ecumenical commitment and engagement with the modern world. Quoting Pope Paul VI and citing Pope Francis, Leo stressed the need to interpret the “signs of the times” and to continue a process of ecclesial reform, themes that closely mirror those proposed for discussion during the consistory.

In the same general audience, Leo explicitly recalled the liturgical reform initiated by the Second Vatican Council, stating that the Council “set in motion an important liturgical reform by placing at the center the mystery of salvation and the active and conscious participation of the entire People of God.”

Referring to the theological and liturgical reflection that marked the 20th century and culminated in the Council, the Pope presented this reform as an integral part of conciliar renewal, linking it to a broader ecclesiology of communion and to the Church’s engagement with the modern world.

This article has been updated.

[Stone]

Vatican II is God: The Consistory Begins
A consistory framed by Vatican II, curated by the Curia, front-loaded with synodal process, and headlined by a cardinal pushing women deacons and “Soho” hospitality

Chris Jackson | Jan 8, 2026

The Council as canon

This consistory opens the way a religion opens: with its sacred text, proclaimed as the key to everything.

Leo XIV does not treat Vatican II as one council among many, held inside a long Catholic memory and judged by what the Church already received. He treats it like the hinge of history, the moment the Church “begins,” the point where the past becomes raw material and the future becomes mandate. He reads Lumen gentium as program, not as reference. He frames it as light. Then, almost immediately, he announces a whole catechesis series dedicated to Vatican II, presented as permanently relevant, permanently urgent, permanently required for reading the world.

That is why the atmosphere feels frightening. This is not mere emphasis. This is enthronement. A council becomes the interpretive tribunal. Everything earlier remains permitted as quotations, provided it gets translated into the conciliar dialect and fitted into the approved frame. The vocabulary does the policing. The priorities enforce the boundary. The “new ecclesial season” becomes a line you are expected to accept as a fact of nature, like gravity, as though Catholic identity started in the 1960s and any path back must count as rebellion.

Once a council functions this way, it stops being a chapter. It becomes genesis. It becomes the alpha and the omega. It becomes the book that rewrites the shelves.


The consistory as onboarding

With that premise set, the rest follows with mechanical consistency. The meeting becomes less a governing act rooted in the perennial Faith and more a guided exercise in the postconciliar method: shared language, shared themes, shared process, shared mood. The Church gets told to evangelize by “attraction.” The cardinals get arranged around tables. The regime gets what it came for: alignment.


Vatican II as the navigation system

In the opening speech, Leo XIV reads Lumen gentium 1 at length, leans hard into the Church-as-sacrament formula, then stitches Isaiah, the Council Fathers, and “the pontificates of Paul VI” and “John Paul II” into one seamless narrative of light radiating outward. The storyline is familiar: the Council “paved the way” for a new season; the present calls for “signs of the times”; the mission is to illuminate the world.

Even the cadence signals the regime. Not the old Catholic reflex of guarding worship, doctrine, discipline, and the priesthood as the nerve center of the Church’s life. The center shifts to the Church’s relationship to “the world,” then to unity projects, then to the social imagination of “fraternal” order. A Church that speaks like this starts treating the altar as one department among many, and every department answers to “mission” defined as broad human uplift.


“Attraction” as the operating principle

Leo XIV highlights the post-Aparecida slogan with approval: “The Church does not proselytize… she grows by attraction.” He repeats the now-standard clarification that “it is not the Church that attracts, it is Christ,” then translates that into the preferred moral register of the hour: charis, agape, love as the credible witness, love as the only thing “worthy of faith.”

The speech even gives the era its bookends. Francis begins with Evangelii gaudium and concludes with Dilexit nos, framed as a coherent arc: the announcement of the Gospel, then the love of the Heart of Christ. The interior logic is clear enough. Evangelization becomes a mood, a welcome, a posture, a radiance. The hard edge of conversion, repentance, discipline, fear of God, the narrow gate, the mortal stakes of sacrilege, the duty to worship as God commands, all of that becomes secondary content, often treated as an obstacle to “attraction.”

A Church that measures success by “attraction” quickly learns to hate friction. Doctrine creates friction. Liturgy creates friction. Moral teaching creates friction. So friction gets managed.


The Radcliffe problem is the point

Enter the meditation, delivered by Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, the same figure spotlighted during the Synod on Synodality, kept in the same symbolic role at the start of this consistory. Reports about the day describe his remarks as mild. The timing does the work. The day before, he is quoted favoring swift ordination of women to the diaconate. Then he stands in the hall to set the tone.

The interview material circulating alongside the consistory frames Leo XIV as continuity with Francis plus improved temperament. “He listens,” “he mediates,” “he gathers people in.” The pitch is not doctrinal clarity, but managerial competence.

Then come the admissions that remove any remaining ambiguity about what “welcome” means in practice. Radcliffe speaks warmly about the “Soho masses” for the homosexual community, insisting the message was simply “You’re welcome.” He entertains the idea of a homosexual pope as a non-issue, shifting the moral axis from objective order to subjective “love,” as though sin becomes irrelevant once the right emotion gets named.

This is the age’s most reliable trick. Swap ontology for sentiment, swap moral law for hospitality language, swap repentance for belonging, then call anyone who resists “clericalist,” “rigid,” “pharisaical,” “political.” The system keeps its saints’ names and discards their theology.


Table talk: synodality everywhere, liturgy nowhere

The consistory’s structure tells its own story: round tables, groups, facilitation, reporting. Leo XIV names four themes for reflection, including liturgy, then immediately narrows the real focus to only two topics for “specific treatment.” Reports from inside the room claim a visible lack of priority for liturgy and a confused sense of the Church’s identity. This fits the pattern. Synodality occupies the room like oxygen; worship becomes a line item.

A Church that downgrades liturgy never stays neutral. The vacuum fills with novelty, performance, and the tastes of the class that runs the committees. The same week, the general audience launches a Vatican II catechesis series. The same week, an extraordinary consistory gets packaged as a therapy session for “estranged” cardinals who need to feel “happy,” since “a miserable Church can’t preach the Gospel.” The Church becomes an affect-management project. Joy becomes a KPI.

Catholicism becomes less like a fortress and more like a wellness brand.


Read the full article here.