Collaboration and compassion are two keys to a bishop's role in a synod church, argues the Most Reverend W. Shawn McKnight, the bishop of Jefferson City, Mo.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and without a clear focus for conversation at the synod, people will naturally try to fill it with any number of issues.

On this episode of Inside the Vatican, host Colleen Dulle and veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell are joined by producer Ricardo da Silva, S.J., to recap the first week of the synod.

Pope Francis preaches about synodality, but the canon lawyers are showing us how to make it more than a pious wish that can be ignored by pastors and bishops who prefer to stick to the old ways.

Steps from the Vatican, LGBT Catholics from around the world gathered to answer the question: What do you want synod delegates to know about your experience as an LGBT Catholic?

At this stage of the discernment, we might ponder if the categorization of women deacons as a “Western obsession” has itself in some ways become a Western obsession.