With the input of two women and a priest, Pope Francis and members of his international Council of Cardinals discussed the role of women in the Catholic Church.
“The council agreed on the need to listen, also and above all in individual Christian communities, to the feminine aspect of the church, so that the processes of reflection and decision-making can benefit from the irreplaceable contribution of women,” the Vatican press office said at the end of the council’s meeting between 4th and 5th December.
The conversation about the role of women in the church included input from: Salesian Sister Linda Pocher, a professor of Christology and Mariology at Rome’s Pontifical Faculty of Educational Sciences “Auxilium”; Lucia Vantini, a professor of theology and philosophy at the Institute of Religious Sciences in Verona, Italy; and Father Luca Castiglioni, a professor of fundamental theology at the seminary of the Archdiocese of Milan, the press office said in a written communiqué from 6th December.
U.S. Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston, a member of the Council of Cardinals and president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, presented a number of ideas for the organisation of assemblies of bishops’ conferences in 2024, “five years after the meeting on the prevention of abuse of minors and vulnerable people” at the Vatican in February 2019.
Picture: Salesian Sister Linda Pocher (CNS photo/Justin McLellan)