Asking pardon for speaking plainly, Pope Francis told members of the International Theological Commission that “one of the great sins we have had is ‘masculinising’ the Church,” which also can be seen by the fact that only five of the commission members are women.
The pope, who appoints the 28 members of the commission, said the Church needs to make more progress in balancing such bodies because “women have a capacity for theological reflection that is different from what we men have.”
Pope Francis met members of the commission at the Vatican on 30th November. He handed them a prepared text, which he described as a “beautiful speech with theological things,” but said that because of his ongoing respiratory problems due to bronchitis, “it’s better that I don’t read it.”
But greeting members of the group, the pope said that perhaps his conviction about the importance of women theologians is comes from the fact that “I’ve studied a lot the theology of a woman,” Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, and her work on Father Romano Guardini, a German priest, philosopher and theologian, who died in 1968.”
Picture: Pope Francis greets Congolese Sister Josée Ngalula, a Sister of St. Andrew and one of five women theologians on the International Theological Commission, a body that studies theological questions for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, at the Vatican on 30th November 2023. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)