As a papal-appointed consultor to the Vatican’s General Secretariat of the Synod, I spent much of October in Rome, participating in the concluding assembly of the Synod on Synodality.

Nearly every day, I convened with Pope Francis and some 350 delegates representing the global Catholic Church. Most were bishops and cardinals; others were lay persons, religious, theologians, and facilitators.

As one of the few social scientists in the Synod Hall, my steady attention went to intersections with empirical realities, trends, inequalities, organizations, and structures of inclusion or marginalization. The ambitious work of those gathered across several weeks invited ample connections to sociological studies I and my teams have conducted on parishes, diversity, women’s roles, the priesthood, polarization, church property, migration, emerging generations, moral-political issues, responses to abuse, and more. Many meaningful conversations transpired informally while mingling with cappuccinos and croissants during coffee breaks in the Synod Hall. Other interactions were more structured, facilitated by three-minute timers and undivided attention.

But the experience of synodality was far from limited to the Synod Hall itself. Hundreds of Catholics invested in the Church’s future descended upon Rome across those weeks — journalists, activists, college and graduate students, nonprofit leaders, diocesan staff, and scholars among them. The environment exuded the vibrance of interconnected networks, critical questions, and the urgencies of rooted resilience.

The entirety of it left me awed by the majestic yet deeply human character of the global Catholic Church.

The final document of the 2024 Synod Assembly charts a path for a continued listening spirit, increased participation, dialogue, accountability, and renewed organizational structures. The work remains unfinished; study groups will continue into 2025 and implementation will matter most at local levels. But I can say from my participation in what was arguably the most exhaustive, multi-year, globally consultative process of any institution on earth: the Roman Catholic Church has changed….and so have I.