Within 15 days of his election in 2013, Pope Francis made history by being the first pope to include two women in the Holy Thursday foot washing. This rite, until then, was reserved for men, and women needed special permission.
This gesture marked the prelude to what would be a pontificate inclined to seek spaces for developing women's roles within the Church, reaching positions of responsibility.
POPE FRANCIS
Women, like men, work for the common good with that intuition that women have. I have seen that in the Vatican every time a woman enters to do a job, things improve.
In fact, 12 years later, the Holy See has the first woman prefect of a Dicastery, which is equivalent to a government minister; moreover, the highest civil authority in the Vatican is another woman, a position that previously could only be held by a cardinal.
Women have also attended the meetings that the pope holds with his closest group of cardinals, who advise him in the government of the Church, as a consultative body. One of those who has participated is the nun Linda Pocher.
SISTER LINDA POCHER
Pont. Fac. of Education Sciences Auxilium
It is not the same thing to be a priest before or after the development of the feminist movement. Something changes. Logically this has repercussions and in some way is asking us to reflect.
And for relevant changes, when Francis allowed, for the first time, 54 women to vote in the last Synod; or when he included three in the dicastery that elects bishops.
MARIA LIA ZERVINO
Member of the Dicastery for Bishops
It is logical that from in the process of selecting bishops, the women must be from the beginning to the end, because we are part of the people of God.
This is at the institutional level; because for the dioceses, for example, Pope Francis created several ministries, such as the Lectorate and the Acolyte. In fact, he changed the Code of Canon Law so that women could have access.
What Francis has made clear throughout this time is that men and women are equal, and should complement each other with different roles; which does not mean that women are inferior.
POPE FRANCIS
God did not create man and then give him a little dog for fun. No. He created them both equal, male and female. Women contribute their own. They don't have to become like men. No, they are women, we need them.
And, for this reason, although women have more space in the Church today, the pope already settled the question of the female priesthood at the beginning of his pontificate.
POPE FRANCIS
Regarding the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and says “no”. John Paul II said it and with a definitive formula.
What the pope is willing to study, and what is underway in the Vatican, would be a kind of “diaconal ministry” that does not involve ordination, since the diaconate is currently considered the preliminary step to the priesthood, whereas in the past, it was linked to a service function.
POPE FRANCIS
In the beginning there were deaconesses. But was it a sacramental ordination or not? There is discussion about this and it is not clear. Yes, they helped, for example in the liturgy, in the baptisms: as the baptisms were by immersion, when a woman was baptized the deaconesses helped; also for the anointing of the woman's body.
But, in any case, the pope's gestures and messages also remain: his visits to women's prisons, his powerful words on labor discrimination or, simply, the way he spoke of the Virgin Mary, when he said that “a Church without women is like the group of apostles without Mary”.
CA
TD: JH
