ESTELA P. PADILLA, PH.D., BUKAL NG TIPAN MISSION TEAM PHILIPPINES - Best Practices

Good day. I am Estela Padilla, a lay woman theologian from the Philippines, member of the XVIth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. I was asked to share our experience on synodal formation of the clergy. I am trainor-facilitator of Bukal ng Tipan, whose mission is to journey with people towards a synodal church, hence we work with a lot of dioceses in the Philippines and abroad.

For us at Bukal, FORMATION IS AN EVENT and a COMMUNAL EXPERIENCE, not simply a seminar that one attends. It is DAILY LIFE that forms us, more than studies or conferences.

Formation as a priest means walking with others in daily life. I personally know some priests and bishops who join their BECs regularly. BEC stands for Basic Ecclesial Communities, they are neighborhood groups, especially popular among the poor, who gather for regular prayer and bible sharing and who also serve their neighbors like visiting the sick, helping financially a neighbor in need, communal gardening or farming, activities for young people, especially the out of school, among other things. Becoming a member of a BEC is formation – it engages a priest in listening to others as they live the Word of God in their daily lives, and in becoming aware of and responding to the struggles and joys in the neighhborhood. BEC-organizing is one of the main works of Bukal training team.

A very important formative event we are doing now as Bukal training team is Diocesan Synodal Pastoral Planning. Most of the time, only a handful of clergy and lay leaders do this task. However, towards synodal renewal, our team Bukal has designed an approach that involves as many of the baptized as possible including all the clergy in a diocese with their bishop in a process of communal consultation, discernment and decision making towards effective implementation. What are the formative events in a diocesan synodal pastoral planning? First, the clergy, all the parish priests with the bishop, together with lay leaders, gather to evaluate their past pastoral planning experiences, the lights and shadows. After this, we dialogue with synodal inputs – from their own diocesan synodal consultation report, the national report and the global synodal experience as a whole so that all could bring out the elements of synodal pastoral planning. When these elements have been articulated by them, we facilitate the discernment of a living cultural symbol that could grasp the elements of synodal pastoral planning. After the clergy and the lay leaders decide on a cultural symbol, they then reflect on a biblical text that could pair up and inspire this cultural symbol. We use a popular cultural symbol so that the ordinary baptized who may not be a regular churchgoer can understand what synodal pastoral planning is and be can also be inspired to participate. For example, in the Diocese of Kalookan, where the largest fishing port of Manila is located, they chose the symbol of fishing and entitled their diocesan synodal pastoral planning as “Mangingisda Ako. Sasama kami!’ (“I am going to fish. We will all join!”) taken directly from John 21:3. This cultural symbol paired with a biblical text become the general framework for diocesan synodal pastoral planning. The clergy and lay leaders then proceed to agree on the steps for synodal pastoral planning – from spiritual preparation (a recollection), to consultation (house to house, neighborhood, church groups, (social) sectors, to discernment and decisionmaking towards a new or rearticulated diocesan vision towards new mission pathways. The clergy and the lay leaders are trained by our team Bukal on every step as the pastoral planning happens among the baptized in every corner of the diocese.  

With Diocesan Synodal Pastoral Planning as a formative event, the clergy, all the parish priests with the bishop, in a diocese, are deeply engaged from the very start and with all the steps of pastoral planning, accompanying and working with lay people in searching for God’s call and direction in their particular local church. Thank you very much for listening.