Pope’s meeting on church future says it’s ‘urgent’ to guarantee governance roles for women

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis’ big gathering of Catholic bishops and laypeople said Saturday it was “urgent” to guarantee fuller participation of women in church governance positions and called for research on allowing women to be deacons to be released within a year.

But the meeting didn’t take decisive action on that issue, and it backed off any specific calls for welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics despite Francis’ repeated outreach to the gay community and willingness to consider blessing same-sex couples.

After a month of closed-door debate, Francis’ meeting on the future of the Catholic Church ended late Saturday with the approval of a 42-page text on a host of issues that will now be considered at a second session next year. None of the proposals is binding, and they are merely offered for Francis to consider.

Each paragraph passed with the necessary two-thirds majority, but the ones involving women and questioning the need for priestly celibacy obtained the most “no” votes.

Francis called the synod over two years ago as part of his overall reform efforts to make the church a more welcoming place, where lay people have a greater say in the life of the church. The process, and the two-year canvassing of rank-and-file Catholics that preceded it, sparked both hopes and fears that real change was afoot.

Progressives had hoped the gathering would send a message that the church would be more welcoming of LGBTQ+ people and offer women more leadership roles in a hierarchy where they are barred from ordination. Conservatives emphasized the need to stay true to the 2,000-year tradition of the church and warned that opening debate on such issues was a “Pandora’s Box” that risked schism.

In a novelty, Francis allowed women and laypeople to vote alongside bishops, putting into practice his belief that the “People of God” in the pews are more important than the preachers. His call for “co-responsibility” inspired in particular women seeking the restoration of female deacons, a ministry that existed in the early church.

In the end, the gathering made its strongest proposals concerning women but none were definitive. The final text said it was “urgent to guarantee that women can participate in decision-making processes and assume roles of responsibility in pastoral and ministry.”

It noted Francis had significantly increased the number of women in high-ranking positions in the Vatican and said the same should occur in local churches.

A follow-on proposal received the most “no” votes of all: 279-67.

In it, the delegates called for theological and pastoral research to continue about allowing women to be deacons, and called for the results of the two study groups that Francis has commissioned to be released before the second session of the synod opens in October 2024.

Women’s Ordination Conference, which lobbies for women priests, gave a mixed judgment. “On some level, the document seems to reflect a recognition of the wounds women have experienced at the hands of the church, but it falls short of engaging substantially with the healing of those wounds, opting instead to leave those issues to ever more studies and commissions,” the group said in a statement.

There was no mention whatsoever of homosexuality in the text, even though the working document going into it had specifically noted the calls for a greater welcome for “LGBTQ+ Catholics” and others who have long felt excluded by the church.