VATICAN (CNS): No one is excluded from the love of God or from being welcomed into the Catholic Church, but God’s love and the Church’s welcome also come with a call to conversion, said the English-language groups at the Synod of Bishops in reports published by the Vatican on October 20.
 
Young people need to know “the Church’s beautiful, yet challenging, vision, teaching and anthropology of the body, sexuality, love and life, marriage and chastity,” said the English-A group.
 

VATICAN (CNS): In an act of solitdarity with migrants and refuges, participants at the ongoing Synod of Bishops joined a 2.4 kilometre walk from Rome’s Trastevere neighbourhood to the Vatican, organised by Caritas Internationalis on October 21 as part of its Share the Journey campaign. 
 
The campaign was initiated in September 2017 to encourage every Catholic everywhere in the world to get to know at least one migrant or refugee and listen to his or her story. The campaign supports solidarity walks around the world.

VATICAN (CNS): The Church needs to further integrate women into ecclesial life to confront the problems of clericalism and an exaggerated sense of masculinity, Marc Cardinal Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, told the Synod of Bishops on October 18.
 
Addressing synod members, the cardinal said he agreed with the working document’s assertion that there sometimes is “an ecclesial inability to recognise, welcome and foster the creativity of the ‘feminine genius’.”
 

VATICAN (CNS): In their first formal reports to the entire Synod of Bishops, many of the gathering’s working groups reported that they had discussed the clerical sexual abuse crisis and—especially—its impact on young Catholics.
 

VATICAN CITY (CNS): Young people should have a right to migrate but should never be forced to do so, said an Italian cardinal at the Synod of Bishops.
 
Giuseppe Cardinal Versaldi of Italy, prefect of Congregation for Catholic Education, told reporters at a briefing on October 6, “The Church in Italy and other countries has opened its doors” to migrants.
 

VATICAN (CNS): Celebrating Passion Sunday Mass on March 25 with thousands of young people, Pope Francis urged them to continue singing and shouting hosanna in the world, proclaiming the lordship of Jesus and following his example of outreach to the poor and suffering.
 
The crowd that shouted hosanna as Jesus entered Jerusalem included all those for whom Jesus was a source of joy, those he healed and forgave, and those he welcomed after they had been excluded from society, the pope said in his homily.
 

VATICAN (CNS): Several young people attending a Vatican-sponsored seminar on the upcoming Synod of Bishops urged the Vatican and the bishops themselves to be opening to listening to young people talk and ask questions about love, sex and sexuality.
 
Twenty people under the age of 35, along with 70 theologians, priests and academics met from September 11 to 15 as part of the preparatory process for the 2018 Synod of Bishops on “young people, faith and vocational discernment.”
 

VATICAN (SE): A preparatory document for the next Synod of World Bishops scheduled to be held in 2018 on Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment was released by the Holy See on January 13 at a media conference at the Vatican.

The document comes in three parts, one addressing young people in the world today, one on discernment of faith and vocation, and the third on pastoral involvement and pastoral care of the young.