VATICAN CITY
America Magazine

Gerard O’Connell | Oct 14 2015

Cardinal Timothy Dolan has provided some important background information on the letter that he and 12 other cardinals sent to Pope Francis on Oct. 5, the opening day of the synod. He revealed that the idea of the letter came from Cardinal George Pell, in a conversation with other bishops as they shared “some worries” about the synod before it started. During that conversation, he said Pell summarized the concerns of the group in three points: the synod’s working document (“Instrumentum Laboris”), the process and the composition of the 10-person special commission set up by the pope to draft the synod’s final document. Dolan said the letter with these concerns was subsequently written in Italian, and he signed it.

The New York cardinal revealed all this information in a radio interview with Mary Shovlain, host of ‘The Vatican Report,’…