The election of the 58-year-old consecrated lay woman was announced on February 1 during an online general assembly spanning from January 24 to February 7.

Some 359 representatives cast their ballots on January 31 and, in accordance with Focolare's statutes, sent the name of the new president to the Vatican's Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life for its ratification.

Karram is the third consecutive woman to lead the worldwide new ecclesial movement, which was founded in the 1940s by Chiara Lubich, an Italian laywoman who served as Focolare's first president until her death in 2008.

Her Italian successor, Maria Voce, has just completed her second, and final, six-year term as the movement's leader.

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Here's the key point: When Francis talks about "more space" for women, it's less about creating new roles and more about assigning greater value to the roles women already play. It's psychological, theological and moral "space" he wants to enhance, not so much corporate and institutional.

As a veteran of the pastoral front lines, Francis grasps that if its women were to walk away tomorrow, the Catholic church would come grinding to a halt.

He knows it's women who raise kids in the faith, women who make parishes run, women who keep alive popular devotions and practices, women who mobilize the church's human resources when people are in need, and on and on.

If the Catholic church is a "field hospital," as Francis has put it, he knows that women are its primary medical staff.

That's not to say Francis won't create more "space" for women in the conventional sense of the term. He could, for instance, name a woman as his spokesperson, a job that's generally the second most visible in the Vatican after the papacy. Continue reading.

John L. Allen Jr is a journalist reporting on 'All things Catholic'. This is from his final post in the National Catholic Reporter, before becoming an Associate Editor at the Boston Globe.

Source: NCR Online

Image: patheos.com