Timothy Radcliffe gave the opening retreats to the Synod Delegates in both sessions, setting a positive tone for the proceedings. Shortly after accepting the APP offer to speak, Pope Francis named him a Cardinal! Among his books is the collection of his first Synod conferences: Listening Together: Meditations on Synodality. If his presentation to us is anything like these talks, we will be overwhelmingly grateful. An example: “Renewing the Church, then, is like making bread. One gathers edges of the dough into the center, and spreads the centre into the margins, filling it all with oxygen. One makes the love overthrowing the distinction between edges and the centre, making God’s loaf, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, finding us.”.

Timothy Radcliffe, a member of the Dominican community at Blackfriars, Oxford. He has been a retreat master and was master general of the Order of Preachers from 1992 to 2001. He has traveled extensively in visiting Dominican communities around the world, gathering poignant experiences that he weaves throughout his preaching and writing.