Pope Francis has made clear that contentious issues like the ordination of women are not on his agenda, but that hasn’t stopped the demand for greater equality.
The 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican on Monday.Credit...Andrew Medichini/Associated Press
By Elisabetta Povoledo
Reporting from Vatican City and Rome
Oct. 26, 2024, 3:49 a.m. ET
The 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican on Monday.Credit...Andrew Medichini/Associated Press
By Elisabetta Povoledo
Reporting from Vatican City and Rome
Oct. 26, 2024, 3:49 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/26/world/europe/vatican-bishops-synod-women-pope.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VE4.XFun.lMmjkvLwAf-F&smid=em-share
When Pope Francis decided last year to allow women to vote for the first time at the next global meeting of bishops, many believed it was a step toward greater equity in the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet, even before the meeting, known as a synod, began this month, the Vatican punted.
It announced that contentious issues like the ordination of women were off the table. The disappointment hit Catholics who had seen the gathering as a motor of potential change with a familiar thud.
“There’s enough misogyny in the world without the Catholic Church leading the way, when it should actually be standing up for a minority,” said Pat Brown, a member of the national committee of Catholic Women’s Ordination, a group based in Britain.
“Wait,” she added, “we’re not a minority; we’re more than half the church, and it’s appalling that instead of standing up for the oppressed, the church is the oppressor.”
The Vatican meeting, four years in the making, was hailed as a major event, comparable to a mini-version of the Second Vatican Council that modernized the church in the 1960s. Catholics around the globe had been canvassed for opinions, and the promotion of women in the church had emerged as a priority.
In an institution where women play an outsize role in its daily workings and outnumber Catholic men toiling in hospitals and schools worldwide, they have very little say where it counts, critics say.
In regions where there is a shortage of priests, like in the Amazon, most religious instructors are women, and many serve as ministerial leaders with the permission of their bishops. In Australia, women are religious leaders in rural communities. Yet, many of these women, worldwide, say their leadership is not always recognized.
Advocates for women’s ordination protested this month in front of the Vatican.Credit...Andrew Medichini/Associated Press
There are so many examples “of leadership and the ministry of women that we’re already seeing all over the world,” said Ellie Hidalgo, a director of Discerning Deacons, an organization based in Durham, N.C., that advocates for female deacons.
In a push to make the church more inclusive, Pope Francis has appointed more women to top jobs at the Vatican than any of his predecessors. But Francis has made clear that female deacons are not on his agenda. In an interview on “60 Minutes” on CBS in May, he said, “Women are of great service as women, not as ministers.”
Deacons are ordained ministers who can preach and perform weddings, funerals and baptisms. But they cannot celebrate Mass. This year, the question of female deacons was delegated to a study group, which has until next summer to present its findings.
When the Vatican meeting draws to a close this weekend, the pope will receive a final report. The pope can adopt the document or issue his own text. The meeting’s report will most likely call for the increased participation of women in church leadership, a shift deemed “urgent” in the document produced by last year’s synod.
For some, that will not be enough.
“I think it will feel pretty insufficient to women, especially those called to ordained ministry,” Kate McElwee, the executive director of the U.S.-based nonprofit Women’s Ordination Conference, said on Friday. “It feels like they’re trying to open different opportunities and make room where they think it’s appropriate for women, but it will feel pretty insufficient if it doesn’t address the urgent need to recognize women as fully equal.”
Kate McElwee, the executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, addressing members during a prayer vigil last fall in Rome.Credit...Gregorio Borgia/Associated Press
The Vatican’s top doctrinal officer, Cardinal Victor Fernandez, explained this past week that Francis had decided the time was “not ripe” to weigh in on the question. On Thursday, the cardinal, who is overseeing the study group, told synod delegates that the question required more study, and that in any case, he believed it was not a priority for most women in the church.
He added, however, that the study group was open to receiving opinions and listening to experiences about the role of women, a step that advocates for ordination saw as an important one.
“Up until now, it’s mostly been a theological conversation or historical conversation,” Ms. Hidalgo, of Discerning Deacons, said on Friday. But “to actually take into account what’s happening on the ground and all the ways in which women’s leadership is being called forth by their communities and by priests and by bishops” could lead to real change, she added.
Throughout this month, various groups have been staging events to raise awareness about women’s role in the church. A liberal group called We Are Church performed a short play at a religious house in Rome, condemning the “absurdity” of deliberating whether women should be given full equality. Ms. McElwee’s group held protest marches.
Others held events explicitly not sanctioned by the church.
Ms. Brown, of the Women’s Ordination Conference, attended a ritual this month in Rome at which the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, a group not recognized by the Vatican, conducted what it called an ordination of six women — three as deacons and three as priests. During the event, on a barge anchored on the Tiber River, the women were invested with a stole and presented with chalices as relatives and friends looked on, cheered and wiped away the occasional tear.
For the Vatican, the event violated a code of canon law that prohibits the ordination of women. The women disagree, claiming apostolic succession from an Argentine bishop — whose credentials the Vatican has challenged — who claimed to have ordained seven women on the Danube in June 2002.
Two years later, another bishop whose identity has not been made public claimed to have ordained the first two female bishops. Since then, more that 270 people in 14 countries have undertaken the same ritual, said the Rev. Mary Bridget Meehan, who was ordained a bishop in the association in 2009 and performed the Tiber ceremony.
The decision to hold the event in the Italian capital was deliberate, she said.
A ceremony ordaining women was held this month on a barge on the Tiber River in Rome.Credit...Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty
“We’re doing a visible witness to say we support the synod, we are part of it, we’re part of the church,” she said. The pope “talks about having conversations in the spirit,” she added. “We’re ready. We’re here.”
Mary Catherine Daniels, one of the newly ordained, said she had suppressed a feeling that she was called to the priesthood for years because “I’ve always wanted to be an obedient daughter of the church, and I knew this was off limits.” But eventually, she said, she followed her heart because she believed it was God’s will.
Last year, Pope Francis gave Sister Linda Pocher, a theologian, carte blanche to organize a series of seminars about women and the church for the group of cardinals who serve as his advisers.
“I was given the freedom to open the windows to the room where they meet and offer some different perspectives,” Sister Pocher said this past week at the presentation of four books containing those seminars, each with a preface by the pope.
Sister Regina Da Costa, a Brazilian theologian who spoke at the presentation, expressed the frustration of many Catholic women who, she said, were “tired of not being listened to, tired of not being considered by the church” and tired of “being behind” the men in the church.
“We’d like to be side by side and move forward together,” she said.
Elisabetta Povoledo is a reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years. More about Elisabetta Povoledo
When Pope Francis decided last year to allow women to vote for the first time at the next global meeting of bishops, many believed it was a step toward greater equity in the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet, even before the meeting, known as a synod, began this month, the Vatican punted.
It announced that contentious issues like the ordination of women were off the table. The disappointment hit Catholics who had seen the gathering as a motor of potential change with a familiar thud.
“There’s enough misogyny in the world without the Catholic Church leading the way, when it should actually be standing up for a minority,” said Pat Brown, a member of the national committee of Catholic Women’s Ordination, a group based in Britain.
“Wait,” she added, “we’re not a minority; we’re more than half the church, and it’s appalling that instead of standing up for the oppressed, the church is the oppressor.”
The Vatican meeting, four years in the making, was hailed as a major event, comparable to a mini-version of the Second Vatican Council that modernized the church in the 1960s. Catholics around the globe had been canvassed for opinions, and the promotion of women in the church had emerged as a priority.
In an institution where women play an outsize role in its daily workings and outnumber Catholic men toiling in hospitals and schools worldwide, they have very little say where it counts, critics say.
In regions where there is a shortage of priests, like in the Amazon, most religious instructors are women, and many serve as ministerial leaders with the permission of their bishops. In Australia, women are religious leaders in rural communities. Yet, many of these women, worldwide, say their leadership is not always recognized.
Advocates for women’s ordination protested this month in front of the Vatican.Credit...Andrew Medichini/Associated PressThere are so many examples “of leadership and the ministry of women that we’re already seeing all over the world,” said Ellie Hidalgo, a director of Discerning Deacons, an organization based in Durham, N.C., that advocates for female deacons.
In a push to make the church more inclusive, Pope Francis has appointed more women to top jobs at the Vatican than any of his predecessors. But Francis has made clear that female deacons are not on his agenda. In an interview on “60 Minutes” on CBS in May, he said, “Women are of great service as women, not as ministers.”
Deacons are ordained ministers who can preach and perform weddings, funerals and baptisms. But they cannot celebrate Mass. This year, the question of female deacons was delegated to a study group, which has until next summer to present its findings.
When the Vatican meeting draws to a close this weekend, the pope will receive a final report. The pope can adopt the document or issue his own text. The meeting’s report will most likely call for the increased participation of women in church leadership, a shift deemed “urgent” in the document produced by last year’s synod.
For some, that will not be enough.
“I think it will feel pretty insufficient to women, especially those called to ordained ministry,” Kate McElwee, the executive director of the U.S.-based nonprofit Women’s Ordination Conference, said on Friday. “It feels like they’re trying to open different opportunities and make room where they think it’s appropriate for women, but it will feel pretty insufficient if it doesn’t address the urgent need to recognize women as fully equal.”
Kate McElwee, the executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, addressing members during a prayer vigil last fall in Rome.Credit...Gregorio Borgia/Associated PressThe Vatican’s top doctrinal officer, Cardinal Victor Fernandez, explained this past week that Francis had decided the time was “not ripe” to weigh in on the question. On Thursday, the cardinal, who is overseeing the study group, told synod delegates that the question required more study, and that in any case, he believed it was not a priority for most women in the church.
He added, however, that the study group was open to receiving opinions and listening to experiences about the role of women, a step that advocates for ordination saw as an important one.
“Up until now, it’s mostly been a theological conversation or historical conversation,” Ms. Hidalgo, of Discerning Deacons, said on Friday. But “to actually take into account what’s happening on the ground and all the ways in which women’s leadership is being called forth by their communities and by priests and by bishops” could lead to real change, she added.
Throughout this month, various groups have been staging events to raise awareness about women’s role in the church. A liberal group called We Are Church performed a short play at a religious house in Rome, condemning the “absurdity” of deliberating whether women should be given full equality. Ms. McElwee’s group held protest marches.
Others held events explicitly not sanctioned by the church.
Ms. Brown, of the Women’s Ordination Conference, attended a ritual this month in Rome at which the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, a group not recognized by the Vatican, conducted what it called an ordination of six women — three as deacons and three as priests. During the event, on a barge anchored on the Tiber River, the women were invested with a stole and presented with chalices as relatives and friends looked on, cheered and wiped away the occasional tear.
For the Vatican, the event violated a code of canon law that prohibits the ordination of women. The women disagree, claiming apostolic succession from an Argentine bishop — whose credentials the Vatican has challenged — who claimed to have ordained seven women on the Danube in June 2002.
Two years later, another bishop whose identity has not been made public claimed to have ordained the first two female bishops. Since then, more that 270 people in 14 countries have undertaken the same ritual, said the Rev. Mary Bridget Meehan, who was ordained a bishop in the association in 2009 and performed the Tiber ceremony.
The decision to hold the event in the Italian capital was deliberate, she said.
A ceremony ordaining women was held this month on a barge on the Tiber River in Rome.Credit...Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty “We’re doing a visible witness to say we support the synod, we are part of it, we’re part of the church,” she said. The pope “talks about having conversations in the spirit,” she added. “We’re ready. We’re here.”
Mary Catherine Daniels, one of the newly ordained, said she had suppressed a feeling that she was called to the priesthood for years because “I’ve always wanted to be an obedient daughter of the church, and I knew this was off limits.” But eventually, she said, she followed her heart because she believed it was God’s will.
Last year, Pope Francis gave Sister Linda Pocher, a theologian, carte blanche to organize a series of seminars about women and the church for the group of cardinals who serve as his advisers.
“I was given the freedom to open the windows to the room where they meet and offer some different perspectives,” Sister Pocher said this past week at the presentation of four books containing those seminars, each with a preface by the pope.
Sister Regina Da Costa, a Brazilian theologian who spoke at the presentation, expressed the frustration of many Catholic women who, she said, were “tired of not being listened to, tired of not being considered by the church” and tired of “being behind” the men in the church.
“We’d like to be side by side and move forward together,” she said.
Elisabetta Povoledo is a reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years. More about Elisabetta Povoledo
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