VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) – Sister Mary Theresa Barron, OLA, president of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), told journalists at a Synod on Synodality press conference Monday that some women “feel the call” to the male-only priesthood and thus, the Church ought to listen to them.
During a press conference Monday, Barron took a question from a journalist who asked her to describe ways Catholic women could “take on meaningful leadership and governance roles that don’t necessarily have to do with ordination.” The issue of women’s ordination is not on the agenda at this month’s Synod, but the door has been left open to future discussion despite the Catholic Church’s infallible and unchangeable teaching that only men can receive Holy Orders and enter the diaconate or priesthood.
“We tend to look at it from the question of ‘can women be ordained in the church today?’ And I think we have to look at the question very much from the spirit. Is the spirit calling women? Because some women do sense a call to priesthood or diaconate,” Barron said.
Sr Mary Barron, leader of @uisg_superiors, says re women deacons that “we tend to look at it from the question of ‘can women be ordained in the church today’ & I think we have to look at the question very much from the spirit. Is the spirit calling women, because some women do… pic.twitter.com/SjPRwsTmqO
— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) October 7, 2024
“I think we have to look broader than just a can we/can we not [question] from a theological or canonical point of view, but in terms of the spirit calling to ministry today and in terms of the needs of mission today, are those calls there and can we continue the discussion?” she added.
Pope Francis appointed Barron a member of the Dicastery for Evangelization, Section for the First Evangelization, in June.
In a statement following her appointment, Barron emphasized the “need” for female leadership in the Church. “In the light of growing into a more synodal expression of Church, it is also an important acknowledgment of the centrality of women to an authentic expression of Church in our time,” she said.
Following the remarks, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Bombay and a member of the Council of Cardinals, jumped in to clarify that discussion on women entering the diaconate “has been taken off [the agenda] and given to part of a study group which is studying theological questions. So, it will not be discussed at the Synod.” Gracias then highlighted that at the last three meetings between Pope Francis and the Council of Cardinals, one session was devoted entirely to women’s role in the Church. “[T]he Holy Father has personally taken an interest in this,” Gracias added.
During the opening week of the Synod, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández provided an update on the study group he leads on the “theological and canonistic questions around specific ministerial forms,” which includes the female diaconate. That study group was one of 10 created based on the October 2023 Synthesis Report released following last year’s Synod, which made an “urgent” call for canon law to be changed to allow more female governance roles and female “deacons.”
Key members of the Synod have voiced their support for female “deacons,” including Cardinals Mario Grech, Robert McElroy, and Blaise Cupich. While Pope Francis has repeatedly affirmed the Catholic teaching that sacred orders are “reserved for men,” in 2016 he did establish a commission to study the question of female “deacons,” and another in 2020 following the Amazon Synod. It has also been claimed by a nun who addressed Francis and a group of Cardinals that he is “very much in favor of the female diaconate.”
Full coverage of the Synod on Synodality can be found at this link here on LifeSiteNews, and on the X account of LifeSite’s Vatican correspondent.
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