Pope Francis opened a meeting of bishops at the Vatican on Wednesday by warning that the Catholic church needs to put aside “political calculations or ideological battles” and welcome “everyone” to dialogue about the faith.

During the Mass at St. Peter’s Square, the pontiff said the church is a place of welcome for “everyone, everyone, everyone” ahead of a three-week series of meetings — part of a years-long process known as the Synod on Synodality — that has sparked hope of change among progressives and alarm by conservatives.

“We’re not here to create a parliament, but to walk together with the gaze of Jesus,” the pope added.

READ: Everything You Need To Know About The Synod On Synodality

The Mass, which also coincided with the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, was concelebrated by nearly 500 priests, bishops and cardinals.

“Dear brother cardinals, brother bishops, sisters and brothers, we are at the opening of the General Assembly of the Synod,” the pope said during the homily. “Here we do not need a purely natural vision, made up of human strategies, political calculations or ideological battles.”

The synod will tackle a series of issues, including better ways to welcome LGBTQ+ Catholics, the possible ordination of women as deacons and priests and allowing for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion.

Francis said he seeks a church that “has God at its center and, therefore, (is) not divided internally and is never harsh externally.”

“This Synod serves to remind us of this,” he added, “Our Mother the church is always in need of purification.”

Blessing of Same-Sex Unions

Even before this week’s synod officially started, Pope Francis sent shockwaves across the Catholic world in a letter to five cardinals. In it, the pope said he was open to blessing same-sex unions and to studying the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood.

The comments came in an eight-page letter Francis penned this past July — and released by the Vatican on Monday — in response to cardinals who had written to the pope expressing concern about a number of issues ahead of the synod.

“Pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of blessing, requested by one or several people, that do not transmit a mistaken conception of marriage,” Francis wrote.

In the same letter, the pontiff also addressed the cardinals’ question regarding women’s ordination to the priesthood, which he said could be open to further study.

The pope’s response was to a set of questions — formally known as a dubia or “doubts” in Latin — specifically referencing gay blessings, women's ordination to priesthood, synodality, divine revelation and the nature of forgiveness.

The five prelates who had submitted the questions — German Cardinal Walter Brandmuller, U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke, Chinese Cardinal Zen Ze-Kiun, Mexican Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íniguez and Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah — did so ahead of the Synod on Synodality, part of a three-year process by which the concerns of Catholics will be discussed.

Many have likened this synod to “Vatican III” because it has the potential to radically change church teachings on a series of issues to conform to the mores of the 21st century. The gathering will be historic because the pope decided to allow women and laypeople to vote alongside bishops in any final document the gathering produces. While fewer than a quarter of the 365 voting members are non-bishops, the move is a radical shift away from a hierarchy-focused Synod of Bishops.

These doctrinal battles have been happening on the sidelines for decades and throughout much of Francis’ papacy since he was elected by the College of Cardinals a decade ago.

German bishops, for example, have been openly discussing a series of reforms, including allowing for the blessing of same-sex unions by priests and for letting divorced couples receive Holy Communion. In November 2022, following talks with the pope and Vatican officials, the head of the German Bishops Conference said the debate on reforms could not be suppressed.

Burke, one of the synod’s biggest critics, countered, “It’s unfortunately very clear that the invocation of the Holy Spirit by some has the aim of bringing forward an agenda that is more political and human than ecclesial and divine.”

Addressing Climate Change

Also on Wednesday, Pope Francis made his strongest statement to date regarding climate change, putting the blame on “irresponsible” Western lifestyles.

“Our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,” he wrote in an encyclical called Laudate Deum (“Praise God” in Latin). “Some effects of the climate crisis are already irreversible, at least for several hundred years, such as the increase in the global temperature of the oceans, their acidification and the decrease of oxygen.”

The statement is a follow-up to his May 2015 encyclical Laudato Si (“Praised Be To You”), which was the first papal writing dedicated to ecological issues.

“Despite all attempts to deny, conceal, gloss over or relativize the issue, the signs of climate change are here and increasingly evident,” the pope added. “No one can ignore the fact that in recent years we have witnessed extreme weather phenomena, frequent periods of unusual heat, drought and other cries of protest.”

Clemente Lisi is the executive editor at Religion Unplugged. He is the author of “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet’s Biggest Sporting Event” and previously served as deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and a longtime reporter at The New York Post. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.