Vatican takes down video asking women to reflect on place in society (PBS NewsHour)

Read the original article on PBS NewsHour

The Vatican has removed controversial video urging women to reflect on their role in society ahead of the organization’s an all-male summit on women’s issues this week.

In the video, commissioned by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, an Italian actress with a thick accent asks women to submit one-minute videos with the hashtag #lifeofwomen, reflection on their identity as women.

The clip was a hit in Italy, but was so ridiculed in the United States, that the Vatican took down the English version from its website.

“It allowed us to understand … how we must represent not just the traditional sensibilities of Europe but also that of other cultures and other horizons,” Ravasi conceded at a press conference Monday. “It allowed me to realize that the sensibilities were profoundly different.”

In the video, new age music plays in the background as actress Nancy Brilli looks into the camera and asks women to reflect on their ideas about their lives, bodies, successes and difficulties in a one-minute video they can send to the council.

“They have taken inspiration from Pope Francis’ openness and are reflecting on women’s culture and the place for women in societies today between equality and difference,” Brilli says.

Many women took the opportunity to respond with a call for the ordination of women, an issue which the Council has chosen not to discuss in its meeting.

“There is no discussion here of women priests, which, according to statistics, is not something that women want,” the council’s working paper states.

The Women’s Ordination Conference, a group fighting for the right of women to become ordained priests in the church, said the Vatican is out of touch with the people they are called to serve.

“Many qualified women, with the support of their communities, discern vocations to priesthood, and yet the hierarchy is comfortable in rejecting the obvious: God does not discriminate,” the statement said.

The group responded with its own video calling for the ordination of women set to the tune of James Brown’s hit song, “It’s a Man’s World.”