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Pope Francis has decided to extend by a year a lengthy global consultation of ordinary Catholics about the future of the Catholic Church, amid limited participation by the laity and seeming resistance to his reforms from the hierarchy. Francis announced Sunday that the planned 2023 gathering of bishops would now take place in two stages — one session in October 2023 and a second in October 2024 — to allow more time to find a way forward. Francis in 2021 formally opened a two-year consultation process on the topic of “synodality,” or a more decentralized structure of the church with the laity having a greater role.