At a special event on March 26 at Toronto's University of St. Michael’s College, respected Canadian Catholic academic and writer Michael Higgins will unveil Synod Diary: Sixty Days That Shook the Church.

Working in partnership with Paulist Press, Higgins’ collaborators proposed that a compelling firsthand account from one of the accredited journalists at the 2023 and 2024 Synod of Bishops would be appealing to Catholic readers.

“It is a way of trying to capture the spirit, excitement, the politics, intrigue and the occasional chicanery of Vatican life and indeed of Church life,” said Higgins, St. Mike’s College’s inaugural Basilian Distinguished Fellow in Contemporary Catholic Thought. “All these people gathered together… what are they talking about? Why does it matter?  And what are the larger implications for the universal Church? Giving it a personal colouration, we decided to craft it as a diary rather than a lengthy discursive piece.”

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There were concerns in the early days about the quality of coverage Higgins and his fellow credentialed journalists would be able to capture. After all, they were not allowed to view the assembly proceedings, and Pope Francis emphasized the need for delegates to employ a “custody of the tongue” to ensure the synod remained a spiritual experience.

Fortunately, any initial frustration was quickly curbed as the daily press conferences provided many enriching and revealing insights.

“We began to see just a level of openness, query, sometimes even struggle and confusion among some of the participants that was really both compelling and endearing,” said Higgins.

Prominent personalities like Cardinal Mario Grech, the secretary general of the Synod of Bishops since 2020, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the Synod’s general rapporteur, and Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, appointed as the general assembly’s spiritual director and retreat preacher, are acknowledged in Higgins’ diary.

The 77-year-old academic, who formerly served as president and vice-chancellor of St. Jerome’s University (then college) and St. Thomas University, also sought to give under-the-radar synodal personalities their due.

“I was struck by Bishop (Daniel E.) Flores from Brownsville, Texas, who is on the cusp of the current immigration crisis in the United States,” said Higgins. “The depth of his theological reflection and his personal courage were quite an example of what you can have in serious Church leadership.

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“There was also, for me, a number of women religious who rose to the challenge without getting involved in counterproductive or difficult debates,” continued Higgins. “They kept things functioning at a level of deep cordiality and searching. The head of the International Union of Superiors General, a remarkable Irish woman (named Sr. Mary Barron). There was also a strong representation from Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.”

Synod Diary: Sixty Days That Shook the Church also recognizes the Canadian contingent on hand for the synod, including Quebec's Cardinal Gerald Lacroix, ecclesiast Catherine Clifford of Ottawa's Saint Paul University, and Fr. Raymond Lafontaine, the Archdiocese of Montreal’s episcopal vicar for the English-speaking faithful.

Though dazzled by many of the personalities he encountered in Vatican City, it was a chance observance on the cobblestone streets that cast the greatest lasting spell on Higgins, who guided St. Mark’s College and Corpus Christi College in Vancouver from 2020 to 2023.

To return to the General House of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) on the Via Aurelia road, Higgins had to catch a bus just outside the Vatican’s wall. His gaze focused on a man who was slumped over on the street.

“I had seen him earlier, so I saw how he worked,” said Higgins. “He was smoking a cigarette, then he would get tired, he'd lie down, and then he'd set up again. He wasn't ill, but he was kind of calculating the way he was interacting with people who passed him by. So, he was near the bus and at one point, he fell over again and just lay there.”

Higgins noticed a group of Franciscans who walked by the man without paying him any notice.

“A young woman came along, and she knelt down, held the hand of this guy and he didn't withdraw,” said Higgins. “He wasn't angry with her. And the tenderness with which she held his hand helped him to sit up, struck me as a remarkable example of the Good Samaritan.”

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This encounter, coupled with the revelations that emanated from the general assembly proceedings, struck Higgins with the belief “that the experience of the synod could penetrate the larger avenues or arteries of society.”

The book launch for Synod Diary: Sixty Days That Shook the Church is scheduled for 6 p.m. EST on March 26 at the University of St. Michael’s College Charbonnel Lounge.