Anything but a synodal Church. After extolling “synodality” as the preeminent fruit of last October’s synod of bishops, and after promising since 2013 more autonomy and powers for the episcopal conferences, including some “authentic doctrinal authority,” Pope Francis has dismembered the agenda of the plenary assembly of one of the biggest episcopates in the world, that of the United States, which has been meeting in Baltimore since Monday, November 12. And at the same time he has abandoned to themselves, in China, those bishops who are not part of the secret accord signed at the end of September between the...