Voices of Faith on International Women’s Day

Voices of Faith is  an annual storytelling event hosted at the Vatican on International Women’s Day.

International Women’s Day this year was the day before yesterday – 8 March.

The initiative began four years ago “to enhance the dignity, participation and leadership of women and girls through persistent and good storytelling.”

At this year’s event women from all over the world focused on peacemaking through the theme: “Stirring the waters: Making the impossible possible.”

One participant is Dr Scilla Elworthy. She is the founder of the Oxford Research Group and co- founder of Peace Direct, UK.

She said women’s leadership is urgently needed “… because humanity is facing major crises that are unprecedented.”

She said these crises are man-made “… like global warming, over population, the rich-poor gap and massive migration and we need to up our consciousness…”.

Elworthy went on to note for the past 5,000 years “we have been missing the feminine; we haven’t had true equality in feminine leadership and boy do we need it now.”

The recently elected Jesuit superior general, Arturo Sosa, also attended the event.

Saying gender parity was an “essential point in humanity”, he also noted studies on poverty always show it hits women and children more than the rest of the population.

“So it seems to me that if we really want to try to reconcile humanity with justice, the first thing is to have special care for women,” he said.

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