Bishop Michael Hoeppner, seventh Bishop of the Diocese of Crookston, officially convoked a Synod at the annual Chrism Mass, April 6.
The Second Synod of the DIocese of Crookston will be celebrated June 2-4 and 10-11, 2010.
This past July and August, parishes were involved in a process of nominating members to the Synod. With the nomination process now complete, there will be eight people selected for Synod membership from each deanery, totally forty lay people. In addition, there will be 19 priests, five deacons, and six religious sisters.
The next step in the Synod process is parish discussions, to be held between November 1 and December 7 of this year. All members of the parish family will be invited to the parish discussions. They will be invited to discuss questions posed by Bishop Hoeppner, as well as the hopes and concerns brought by the people. Bishop Hoeppner's propsed questions can be found in the brochure distributed to all parishes and also available on this website in full or all-text format (above).
Every parish discussion will have faciliators, who will be trained in October. The information gathered from the parish discussions will be collated and used to focus questions for deanery discussions during the first six weeks of 2010.
Bishop Hoeppner will use the information gathered from the deanery discussions to form the six issues to be addressed by the Synod.
We are praying for the sucess of the Second Synod of the Diocese of Crookston at all of our weekend Masses. Please hold the Synod in your daily prayers as well.
"Through our Synod process, may we come to understand and appreciate more fully who we are in Christ Jesus as God's Church, and how we might best serve God as his Church in our world, in our day," said Bishop at the Mass.