Rome – In a Vatican women’s magazine, recent remarks by Pope Francis on the appointment of women to positions of authority in the Catholic Church have been softly criticized, saying the pope is touching a ‘sore point’, again warning against the so-called clericalisation of women.
‘Women Church World’, a monthly supplement to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, comments in its January issue on the end of 2020 Let’s dream: the road to a better future, a collaborative effort between Francis and British author Austen Ivereigh.
The commentary, written by former Vatican radio journalist Romilda Ferrauto and featured on the last page of the magazine, praises Francis’ words in the book about his efforts to appoint more women to Vatican roles.
But it also says the pope’s later warning against the “clericalization” of women, a reprimand that Francis repeated during his eight-year papacy, “touches a sore point [of] mistrust, fear and resistance. ‘
“This goes to the heart of the uncertainty that exists in some margins of the Catholic universe and beyond, regarding the exclusion of women from the ordained ministry and their perhaps subordinates,” Ferrauto writes.
Throughout his nearly papacy, Francis struggled to better include women in the Catholic Church’s leadership structure and ministries, and repeatedly reaffirmed the ban on Pope John Paul II on the dedication of women to the priesthood.
The pope also warned against the “clericalization” of women in his February 2020 document responding to the Vatican Synod of Bishops for the Amazon region, saying he did not want the church to limit its understanding of itself to only a functional structure.
“Such a reductionism would lead us to believe that women would only gain greater status and participation in the Church if they were admitted to the Holy Order,” he said in the document. “But the approach would actually narrow our vision; it would lead us to serve women.”
In Let’s dream, the pope seemed to have presented his first public defense on the appointment of women to roles of authority. He pointed in particular to his appointment in 2016 of the Italian Barbara Jatta to lead the Vatican Museums and to several other women he had appointed as under-secretaries of the Vatican departments.
“Perhaps because of spirituality, which is a corruption of the priesthood, many people mistakenly believe that the leadership of the church is exclusively male,” the pope said in the book.
“To say that they are not really leaders because they are not priests is spiritual and disrespectful,” he added.
Ferrauto writes that women’s criticism of Francis’ comments “was not much, but severe.” She cites a statement from the Women’s Ordination Conference and remarks by Anne Soupa, a French theologian who applied at the Vatican’s embassy in Paris in 2020 to be the next archbishop of Lyon.
“For Francis, the fact that the woman says that in reality they do not rule because they are not priests is spiritual and disrespectful,” Ferrauto writes.
The fact remains that, as has been emphasized many times, the reflection on the Christian life for women compels us to ask the question of the priesthood in terms of power and the balance of powers and the reality of the pastoral priesthood in connection with the baptismal priesthood. , “she continues.
The rest of the issue of ‘Women Church World’ in January 2021 is largely devoted to the work of Catholic women’s religions around the world. It carries the theme, “Sisters: Today is Not Yesterday”, and focuses on how sisters are different from the images often shown in popular movies of them.
Included in profiles of prominent sisters of today are figures such as missionary of Jesus Sr. Norma Pimentel, executive director of Rio Grande Valley Catholic Charities; Social Service Sr. Simone Campbell, executive director of the Washington-based Catholic Lobby Network; and Salesian Sr. Alessandra Smerilli, one of five official advisers to the Vatican City Papal Commission.