RIMINI, Italy (LifeSiteNews) — Footage from Pope Leo XIV’s Mass in the Italian seaside town of Rimini last week shows a woman distributing the Holy Eucharist to the faithful.
During the distribution of Communion for the August 22 Mass, which concluded Pope Leo’s pastoral visit to San Marino and Rimini, a woman can be seen distributing the Blessed Sacrament to the faithful, many of whom were dressed immodestly for the Mass. Since Pope Paul VI permitted the use of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion (both male and female) in his 1973 instruction Immensae Caritatis, women have frequently been permitted to distribute during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Contrary to Leo, however, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI refused to allow women to distribute Communion at their papal Masses. Both of them also stressed that extraordinary ministers should be used only when a “necessity” exists.
The woman distributing the Eucharist is viewable below beginning at 1:21:29.
A year before allowing women to serve as Eucharistic ministers, Paul VI issued his 1972 motu proprio Ministeria Quaedam, which designated the roles of lector and acolyte as “lay ministries,” quickly leading to women in both roles. Decades later, Pope Francis promulgated the 2021 motu proprio Spiritus Domini, which modified canon law to allow women to be officially installed as acolytes and lectors.
Several Catholic prelates have sharply criticized allowing women to serve in key liturgical roles over the years.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider, during an interview with LifeSiteNews Editor-in-Chief John-Henry Westen, emphasized that allowing women to serve as altar servers and lectors has given a sign of “introducing feminism” into the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and would logically lead to the introduction of female ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood, contrary to constant Church teaching.
WATCH: Bishop Schneider says women should not be lectors or altar servers
The same logic can be applied to allowing female Eucharistic ministers.
Allowing female altar servers and lectors “is giving a sign of introducing feminism [into] the core … of the Holy Mass, as a kind of promotion of giving the women access, step by step, to the Holy Ministry,” Schneider said at the time.
“They say first [allow women to serve as an] acolyte, and then, of course, when acolyte, why not deacon? And when deacon, why not priest? It is (logical),” he argued. “And when [a] priest, why not bishop? And when bishop, why not pope? It is not a joke; it is really the consequence,” the bishop added.
This article has been updated.