Press Release: ACP WELCOMES BISHOPS’ RESPONSE TO IRISH NATIONAL SYNODAL ASSEMBLY
The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) warmly congratulates the Irish Catholic bishops on their immediate and positive response to the recent Irish National Synodal Assembly meeting, which took place, with 300 delegates in attendance, in Gormanston, Co Meath on October 17th. We also welcome their considered statement of intent in their follow-up autumn meeting in Maynooth (October 21st).
We commend them for their historic, prophetic and pragmatic endorsement of a process described by the late Pope Francis when he said: “Synodality is what the Lord expects from the Church of the third millennium”. We assure them of our support and solidarity in doing everything we can in the years ahead to sustain and embed the Synodal Pathway in the Irish Catholic Church.
Since the founding of our association in 2010, we have hoped and prayed that the vision of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) would receive a fair wind. We are therefore greatly encouraged by the bishops’ decision “that progress should not wait” and that they “intend to bring proposals concerning parish and diocesan life back to their local communities, examine existing initiatives and identify where improvements or new approaches are needed”.
Equally encouraging is the commitment that “synodality must grow from the participation, experience and gifts of people in local communities”. The recognition that “synodality develops through the active involvement of the wholePeople of God” augurs well for the synodal future of our church.
We are also heartened by “the call for more shared leadership and responsibility and greater recognition of women’s contributions, vocations and ministries within the Church” and “the desire for stronger engagement with young people”.
Our thanks to Archbishop Eamon Martin whose opening words in Gormanston captured the promise and the purpose of the day and whose subsequent comments affirmed its connection with Pope Francis’ key focus on parrhesia – the importance of speaking the truth openly. Thanks also to Bishop Thomas Deenihan for his words of welcome and for his confident and reassuring description of the synodal pathway as “a new springtime for our Church”.
Our thanks to all who have walked and will continue to walk this synodal journey.
Buíochas le Dia.
Well done and said ACP, a very welcome contrast to the completely mistimed prominence given to the negativities of just one ‘senior priest’ in the Irish Catholic of October 15th, 2026.
All others disposed to be negative need to ask themselves if it is not that very attitude that most endangers the church – and the Catholic faith – in Ireland just now. Do those lay people who voted in Gormanston for the promotion of parish catechists, for the healing of the church and for parishes to be centred on faith formation, truly need to be told they are not being ‘realistic’ by “Ireland’s biggest and best-selling religious newspaper”?
The editor of the Irish Catholic seriously needs to ask himself why his front page dismissed the witness of 300 people representing all Irish dioceses – and the bishops and other clergy who attended – in favour of the objections of just one priest from one diocese. If that one priest did not himself participate in the Irish synodal process 2021-26 – the only serious attempt since Vatican II to involve all of the baptised on an equal footing – he needs to ask himself why. So does “Ireland’s biggest and best-selling religious newspaper”.