The question of women, ministry and leadership echoed loudly in parishes and bishops’ assemblies when Pope Francis called two years ago for a worldwide discussion among rank-and-file Catholics about the Church’s main challenges and issues. The question is resounding more loudly as the summit of bishops and lay Catholics known as the Synod on Synodality, Read more
The Vatican is unlikely to make any statement on the possibility of women being ordained to the diaconate in the Roman Catholic Church until after the international bishop’s Synod on Synodality next year, said international expert Dr Phyllis Zagano. Dr Zagano was one of 12 scholars appointed by Pope Francis in 2016 to the commission Read more
Now it is formally illegal to ordain a woman as a deacon. Or as a priest. Or as a bishop. On June 1, Pope Francis promulgated revisions to the Code of Canon Law detailing crimes and punishments. The new “Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church” takes effect on December 8. Most of the revisions Read more
Women served as deacons in Europe for about a millennium in a variety of ministerial and sacramental roles, according to Phyllis Zagano, an author and professor of religion at Hofstra University, and Bernard Pottier, S.J., a faculty member at the Institut D’Études Théologiques in Brussels, in an interview this week with America. “They anointed ill Read more
Much of the world may be charmed by Pope Francis, but what has he done to include women as decision makers in the Catholic Church? More to the point, what can he do? Francis has, of course, been busy with other things. The seventy-eight-year-old Jesuit now in the third year of his papacy seems quite Read more