Pope's Meeting Calls Expanding Women's Church Roles 'Urgent'

Pope Francis' big gathering of Catholic bishops and laypeople declared Saturday that guaranteeing fuller participation of women in church governance is "urgent," calling for research on allowing women to be deacons to be released within a year. After a month of closed-door debate, the Vatican meeting on the future of the church ended with the approval of a 42-page text on a host of issues that will be considered at a second session next year, the AP reports. Still, the National Catholic Reporter points out, the result was a postponement on deciding the deacon issue and a failure to acknowledge tensions that surfaced over the month about how to treat the church's LGBTQ members.

Each paragraph of the text passed with the necessary two-thirds majority, but the ones involving women and priestly celibacy obtained the most no votes. And the 81 proposals, many of which are general, include calls for further study in at least 20 cases. Nevertheless, organizers hailed the voting as a success since none of the paragraphs were rejected, per the AP. Organizers and participants alike had tried to temper expectations for any big changes to emerge, especially on hot-button doctrinal issues, while insisting that the mere process of forcing bishops to sit down at round tables to listen to ordinary Catholics for a month was important. The pope, too, sat at one of the tables. The church had canvassed rank-and-file Catholics for two years before convening the Synod on Synodality.

Progressives wanted the synod to send a message that the church would be more welcoming of LGBTQ+ people and offer women more leadership roles in a hierarchy that bars them from ordination. Others warned that opening debate on such issues risked schism. Francis had called the meeting as part of his efforts to make the church more welcoming. In his vision of a "synodal" church, the faithful are listened to and accompanied rather than preached at by an out-of-touch "clerical" hierarchy. Another session is planned for next October, with final recommendations or conclusions from that meeting presented to Francis for his consideration in a future document.

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