Synod
In the Spring of 2022, Campus Ministry invited students to participate in the Synod on Synodality, an extension of Pope Francis' invitation to the Universal Church. Synodality is an approach that requires journeying together through gathering, listening, and actively partaking in the Church's mission of evangelization and has been used by bishops to discern and decide about specific issues facing the Church in the past.
Campus Ministry hosted over 100 listening sessions, offering a safe space for students to share their unique experiences with the Church and at Notre Dame. Following these listening sessions, prevalent themes were identified and categorized into three areas:
- How students relate to self
- How students relate to institutions (ND and the Church)
- How students relate to "others"
We invite you to read the report to learn more about the identified themes. Campus Ministry will continue to grapple with these topics and how this important process might inform our work of forming and engaging Notre Dame students in their lives of faith.
In partnership with the University, we offer this report to our campus community and the local Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese to synthesize the conversations among our Notre Dame community. We hope to contribute the voices and experiences of young people in a university setting to the ongoing synodal process.