Hey! So Glad You're Here.

Hi, I'm Elise! I'm a college student, journalist, poet, and artist in the Philadelphia area. I am traveling to Rome as a pilgrim to witness the Synod on Synodality. I began this blog as a project for an independent study on Synod that I am doing this semester. 

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My involvement in the Synod began in 2021, when I attended a number of listening sessions on my college campus. After a cross-campus gathering with the Archbishop of Philadelphia involving about a dozen Catholic colleges and universities in Philadelphia, I joined SCHEAP (Synodality in Catholic Higher Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia), an emerging organization discussing and discerning what synodality looks like in higher education, and among young people as a whole. 

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For the first week of my time in Italy, I will be a part of a delegation representing Discerning Deacons, an organization serving the ongoing discernment of the restoration of the female diaconate in the Catholic Church. Through my leadership in SCHEAP, I had the immense privilege of traveling to Rome with DD last fall to witness the first General Assembly of the Synod, and this trip truly changed my life. 

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For the second half of my trip, I will be traveling with CENTERS, a group of over a hundred American college students traveling to Rome to witness the Synod. 

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I will be meeting with a number of Synod voting delegates, attending Synodal press briefings as a journalist, and witnessing public Synod events such as the Penitential Service and the Opening Mass. I will be reflecting on all that I experience throughout this trip, and sharing it in the form of journal entries, creative writing, and art. ​