Gozo Bishop Mario Grech’s Santa Marija pastoral letter on opening up the Church to divorced Catholics who are in a second relationship is a welcome attempt to make the Church more inclusive. Mgr Grech made it clear that removing the barriers facing such Catholics does not put the Church’s teaching on marriage at risk and that mercy was at the heart of Christian doctrine.

This is the second time in the past two months that Mgr Grech has spoken about the difficulties faced by Catholics who have gone through a marriage breakdown. His pastoral letter in fact comes less than two months before the second round of the bishops’ synod on the family, which starts on October 4 at the Vatican. Mgr Grech represented the Maltese Episcopal Conference at last year’s synod and will do so again this year.

The synod is expected to deal with a whole range of family and social issues, including the plight of divorced Catholics who remarry outside the Church, a wider acceptance of gay people, contraception and ‘irregular’ relationships such as Catholics living together without being married.

There were clear divisions during last year’s synod between conservative and liberal bishops and we can expect similar discords this year. However, there is little doubt that under Pope Francis the Church is moving towards greater inclusiveness and is having an open and frank discussion on a number of social issues.

While the Pope’s proposals at last year’s synod – which called for a wider acceptance of gay people as well for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion – were ‘rejected’ as they failed to win the backing of two-thirds of the bishops, which is the required threshold for approval – they were nevertheless approved by more than half the bishops. This was already an achievement in itself and shows that the Church is open to change and is moving in the direction of reform, greater tolerance and openness.

Last year’s synod therefore laid a solid foundation for the Church to move forward at this year’s meeting of bishops in October. We should not expect radical change in the Church’s teachings, especially over the institution of marriage, which for the Church is the permanent union of a man and a woman. The challenge for the Church is to remain faithful to its core beliefs while at the same time acknowledging today’s realities and doing its utmost to welcome back to its fold those Catholics who feel excluded from it.

Pope Francis has shown great courage and moral conviction in discussing a number of international issues such as the protection of the environment and the need for a fairer system of capitalism. He now has to deal with changing cultural attitudes that have made divorce, remarriage, cohabitation before marriage, contraception and acceptance of gays more acceptable. It is certainly not easy for the Church to adapt its teachings to changing times but the Pope seems to be moving in that direction while remaining faithful to Catholicism’s core beliefs.

We augur that October’s synod is successful and that a consensus can be reached between the conservative and liberal factions of the Church. The proposal by German Cardinal Walter Kasper, for example, a leading Church liberal, that the Church should follow the Eastern Orthodox Church by allowing some Catholics who had remarried civilly to undergo a period of penance that would eventually lift their ban on Holy Communion, is surely worth considering and could be a good basis to move the Church forward.