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| Pope Leo XIV on day of his election - St.Peter’s Square, Vatican |
Pope Leo XIV has made several encouraging statements about the equality and dignity of women. As a woman priest who has worked for decades for full equality for women in the Roman Catholic Church, I welcome these affirmations.
At the same time, I believe they raise an unavoidable question: If women and men are truly equal in dignity, baptism and discipleship, why does the institutional Church continue to exclude women from ordained ministry?
This is the conversation I hope Pope Leo will eventually be willing to have with women in the Church.
On International Women’s Day, March 8, 2026, Pope Leo XIV made a simple but significant declaration:
“We renew our commitment, which for us Christians is based on the Gospel, to recognize the equal dignity of man and woman.”¹
I appreciate his insistence that women’s equality is not simply a concession to contemporary culture. It is grounded in the Gospel.
That brings us directly to Jesus.
Jesus repeatedly crossed the religious and cultural boundaries that restricted women. He engaged the Samaritan woman in a profound theological conversation, and she became an evangelizer to her community. Significantly, Pope Leo himself highlighted her role on March 8, calling her “the first of many female evangelizers.”²
The movement of Jesus was radically inclusive for its time. Women were not peripheral to it. They were disciples, witnesses and proclaimers of the Good News.
Jesus welcomed women as disciples and partners in his mission. The Gospel of Luke tells us that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and other women traveled with Jesus and the Twelve and supported the ministry from their own resources (Luke 8:1–3). In a patriarchal culture, Jesus repeatedly crossed religious and social boundaries to affirm women who had been marginalized, silenced, or excluded.
He defended the woman who anointed him when others criticized her (Mark 14:3–9). He praised Mary of Bethany for sitting at his feet in the traditional posture of a disciple learning from a teacher (Luke 10:38–42).
Most significantly, the risen Christ entrusted Mary Magdalene with the proclamation at the heart of Christian faith: “I have seen the Lord” (John 20:18). She was commissioned to announce the Resurrection to the other disciples. This is why Christian tradition has honored Mary Magdalene as the “apostle to the apostles.”
Pope Leo in his 2026 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas acknowledges that equality must be more than words.
He shared that although awareness of women’s rights has increased, there is still a long way to go before those rights are genuinely guaranteed. Then he makes an observation that I believe has profound implications for the Church:
“It is, therefore, not enough to state simply that men and women have equal dignity and rights.”
Leo explains that equality must be reflected in concrete decisions, including access to education, employment, social and political responsibility, and in whether women’s contributions are actually heard and valued. He concludes that as long as this gap remains, society cannot claim that it fully recognizes women as possessing the same dignity as men.³
I agree wholeheartedly.
But I would invite Pope Leo to apply this same principle to the Roman Catholic Church.
If declaring equality is insufficient for society, can declaring women and men equal in dignity be sufficient for the Church while women remain excluded from sacramental leadership and major areas of ecclesial decision-making?
Equality must become visible in structures as well as statements.
Pope Leo has also offered an important theological foundation for this conversation on equality.
In his April 1, 2026 general audience reflecting on the Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium, he said:
“Before any distinction of ministry or state of life, the Council affirms the equality of all the baptized.”⁴
This is enormously important.
Baptism is the fundamental sacrament of Christian identity. Through baptism, women and men become equally members of the Body of Christ.
Leo went on to cite Vatican II’s teaching that the baptized share in Christ’s priestly, prophetic and kingly functions.⁵
Here we encounter what I believe is one of the central contradictions in contemporary Catholicism.
Women are equal members of the Body of Chrisr through baptism in Christ’s priestly mission.
Women are created equally in the divine image.
Women receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Women are called to proclaim the Gospel.
Yet women are told that their gender prevents them from receiving Holy Orders.
The question is no longer whether women possess gifts for ministry. Women are already theologians, pastoral leaders, chaplains, educators, canon lawyers, spiritual directors, missionaries and leaders of Catholic communities throughout the world.
The deeper question is whether the institutional structures of the Church reflect the baptismal equality the Church itself proclaims.
During his June 2026 apostolic journey to Spain, Pope Leo returned to Genesis:
“God created ‘humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’”
Leo taught that in this biblical affirmation is rooted “the inalienable dignity of every human being.”⁶
For me, this is at the heart of the issue.
Women are not secondary images of God.
Women do not image Christ less fully than men.
The risen Christ cannot be confined to male biology.
At baptism, every Christian becomes another Christ—not because of gender, but because we have been immersed into the life, death and resurrection of Christ.
Therefore, when a woman stands at the altar and proclaims the words of Jesus, “This is my body,” she does not cease to be an image of Christ because she is female.
On the contrary, she reveals something the Church urgently needs to see: Christ lives in the whole Body of Christ—female and male and beyond every human boundary we construct.
Women Are Already Leading the Church now.
Women are not waiting for permission to live their baptismal calling.
Throughout the world, women are leading communities, preaching the Gospel, accompanying the dying, baptizing, teaching theology, advocating for justice, caring for creation and serving people on the margins.
In August 2026, Pope Leo addressed the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States and expressed appreciation for the enormous diversity of their ministries and charisms.⁷
Women religious have demonstrated for generations what Spirit-filled leadership looks like.
So have countless lay women.
And so have women called to ordained ministry.
Roman Catholic Women Priests are part of this unfolding story.
We are not leaving the Church.
We are leading the Church into a more inclusive future.
Our inclusive Catholic communities are living examples of ecclesial grassroots renewal. Women and men preside and lead together. LGBTQ+ persons are welcomed. Divorced and remarried Catholics are welcomed. All are invited to the Eucharistic table.
We are experiencing what priestly ministry can become when it moves away from clerical privilege toward a community of baptized equals.
I welcome Pope Leo XIV’s statements affirming women’s equality.
I rejoice when he says that the equal dignity of women and men is rooted in the Gospel.
I applaud his understanding that equality must be embodied in concrete structures rather than simply proclaimed.
And I affirm wholeheartedly his teaching that there is an equality among all the baptized.
What if we follow these principles to their logical and Gospel-centered conclusion:
If women are equal images of God;
if women and men share equally in baptism;
if women participate in Christ’s priestly, prophetic and royal mission;
if the Holy Spirit gives gifts without regard to gender;
and if equality must be reflected in actual structures and responsibilities—
then the Church must confront the contradiction of excluding women from ordained ministry.
The Holy Spirit has never waited for ecclesiastical permission before calling prophets.
I believe the Spirit is moving now through women and men who are creating communities of equality, justice and radical inclusion.
Roman Catholic Women Priests are already living this change now.
We are not asking the Church simply to make room for women within an unchanged clerical system. We are witnessing to something larger: a renewed priestly ministry in a community of equals.
Perhaps Pope Leo’s own words provide a bridge toward that future.
The question now is whether the institutional Church will have the courage to cross it.
Footnotes
- Pope Leo XIV, Angelus, March 8, 2026, International Women’s Day. Leo stated that Christians’ commitment to recognizing “the equal dignity of man and woman” is “based on the Gospel.” Vatican.va.
- Ibid. In his reflection on John 4, Leo described the Samaritan woman as “the first of many female evangelizers.”
- Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, Encyclical Letter on the Care of the Human Person in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, May 15, 2026, no. 57. Leo states that it is insufficient simply to declare equal dignity and rights; equality must be embodied in concrete decisions, responsibilities and the valuing of women’s contributions.
- Pope Leo XIV, General Audience, “The Documents of the Second Vatican Council: Lumen Gentium—Living Stones in the Church and Witnesses in the World,” April 1, 2026.
- Ibid.; see also Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, no. 31, on the baptized sharing in the priestly, prophetic and kingly functions of Christ.
- Pope Leo XIV, Address to Diocesan Charitable and Welfare Organizations, Church of Sant AgustÃ, Barcelona, Spain, June 10, 2026; citing Genesis 1:27 and Magnifica Humanitas, no. 50.
- Pope Leo XIV, Video Message to the Annual Assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, August 12, 2026, on the occasion of LCWR’s 70th anniversary.
Acknowledgment of AI Assistance
This article reflects the theological perspective, ministry experience and advocacy of Bridget Mary Meehan, ARCWP. ChatGPT (OpenAI) was used as a research and editorial tool to help locate Pope Leo XIV’s public statements, organize source material, develop the article’s structure and assist with editing and footnote preparation. The author reviewed and shaped the argument, theological interpretation and final conclusions and takes responsibility for the content.
