In May 2021, the Vatican announced that the Synod of Bishops (“For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission”), previously scheduled for 2022, would be postponed until October 2023. The delay is partly due to COVID-19, but, as Cardinal Mario Grech, the general secretary for the Synod of Bishops, stated, it also allows the synod to be transformed “from an event into a process.” The timeframe for the synod now includes three phases: a diocesan phase (October 2021 until April 2022); a period of discernment by means of continental assemblies (September 2022 through March 2023); and a third phase, the meeting of bishops in October 2023. In his homily at the Mass formally launching the synod (October 10, 2021), Pope Francis expressed his hope that the synodal process would be marked by three verbs—encounter, listen, and discern—and that Catholics would become “experts in the art of encounter.”