Pope Francis launched the second phase of his Catholic reform effort Wednesday, calling for women to hold more church leadership roles but ruling out ordained clergy.
Francis led an opening Mass in St. Peter’s Square with the 368 bishops and laypeople who will gather behind closed doors for three weeks to discuss the church’s future and how to better serve Catholics.
After facing opposition in the synod’s first session last year, several difficult subjects are off the table. They include LGBTQ+ Catholic ministry and women deacons.
Francis has assigned these issues to 10 simultaneous study groups, creating uncertainties about what will come out of the synod when it closes Oct. 26 with a final set of ideas for Francis to consider.
In 2021, Francis began the reform process to create a more inclusive, humble, and welcoming church where regular Catholics had more input in decision-making than the all-male clergy hierarchy.
The two-year poll of rank-and-file Catholics that shaped the process raised hopes and anxieties of actual change.
In his marching orders Wednesday, Francis asked delegates to put aside their self-serving views and listen to one other to “give life to something new.”
He stated in his homily that “otherwise, we will end up locking ourselves into dialogues among the deaf, where participants seek to advance their own causes or agendas without listening to others and, above all, without listening to the Lord.”
The first phase of the synod process concluded last year that women should be fully involved in church governance and that theological and pastoral research on women deacons should continue.
Deacons officiate baptisms, weddings, and funerals, but not Mass.
Advocates say allowing women to be deacons would help address the Catholic priest shortage and address longstanding complaints that women are barred from the priesthood despite doing most of the work educating the young, caring for the sick, and passing on the faith.
Opponents say ordaining women deacons would lead to priesthood ordination. The Catholic Church says Christ picked only men as his 12 apostles, hence only men can be priests.
Francis has frequently defended the all-male priesthood and slammed “obtuse” diaconate proponents this weekend. Following a difficult visit to Belgium where female students challenged him, Francis said such calls were an attempt to “make women masculine.”
His views have incensed women’s ordination advocates, who have organised a series of events outside the synod this month in Rome.
“It’s so insulting to keep on saying that the only valid role this pope will approve of is to be nurturing, is to be a mother, when you can be nurturing and mothering and be a priest,” said Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research trustee Miriam Duignan.
“He is putting a spiritual stamp of approval on sexism,” she declared at a Women’s Ordination Conference prayer event this week. “He is irresponsible and dangerous for criticising, belittling, dismissing, and demonising women who are just saying ‘Stop lying. Stop hiding and stop making us second-class citizens.
While ordained ministry for women is unlikely, many other proposals are being discussed, including having women hold more leadership roles in seminaries and serve as judges on canonical courts that decide marriage annulments and priest discipline cases.
The synod has 368 members—272 bishops and 96 non-bishops. Overall, 85 women are participating, 54 of whom can vote.
Francis invited two mainland Chinese bishops, many of his closest cardinal aides, and exiled Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Jose Alvarez to participate in addition to bishops conference delegates.
Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, an opponent of the synod and Francis’ presidency, is also on the list of pontifically nominated members.
Mueller published an essay on German Catholic site kath.net this week criticising Francis’ penitential liturgy on Tuesday, in which he requested pardon for a variety of sins to atone for the church’s crimes before the conference.
Mueller criticised “newly invented sins”—including sins against the synod and “of using doctrine as stones to be hurled,” a reference to conservative criticism of Francis’ reform efforts as compromising church orthodoxy.
Mueller claimed a laundry list of manufactured crimes “reads like a checklist of woke and gender ideology, somewhat laboriously disguised as Christianity.”
Pope-appointed non-bishop members include American Jesuit Rev. James Martin, who heads an LGBTQ+ outreach ministry. Martin has the support of Francis, who unilaterally approved same-sex blessings after the synod’s first session, and the Rev. Timothy Radcliffe, one of its “spiritual assistants”.
Radcliffe wrote this week in L’Osservatore Romano that even church doubters should see the positive in LGBTQ+ Catholics and their partnerships and why the church should welcome them.
“Some parts of the church see gay acceptance as evidence of Western decadence,” he wrote. “But the church must defend gay people’s lives and dignity, who face capital punishment in 10 countries and criminal prosecution in 70. They deserve to live, he argued.
He said that Christians who oppose pastoral care for homosexuality have gifts the Western church should value, including a strong awareness of the divine life in creation.
“The Body of Christ needs all our gifts,” he said.