Holy Father,
Most eminent and excellent synod fathers,
dear brothers and sisters,

Jesus Christ is our master, our Lord, and the Good Shepherd. When, according to the evangelist Mark, he saw a great crowd, he had compassion on them: “and he began to teach them many things” (Mc. 6, 34). In this regard, Pope Francis has indicated the method and the program which in certain ways we too should follow in our work: “...to see, to have compassion, to teach. We can call them the verbs of the Shepherd … The first and second, to see and to have compassion, are always found together in the attitude of Jesus: in fact his gaze is not the gaze of a sociologist or a photojournalist, for he always gazes with “the eyes of the heart” … From this tenderness is born Jesus’ wish to nourish the crowd with the bread of his Word, that is, to teach the Word of God to the people. Jesus sees, Jesus has compassion, Jesus teaches us.” Paus Franciscus, Angelus/Regina Caeli, Het medelijden van Christus de Goede Herder (19 juli 2015), 2. This vision corresponds with the three great themes of the instrumentum laboris, the fruit of an intense, collegial path. Without being able to mention in this introductory relation all the important themes which have emerged in the discussion and the document of the last synod, and since then, we try then to follow in particular only the principal themes.