Irish Times: Mary McAleese criticises Pope Francis’s document

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Seeds of hope

The Women’s Ordination Worldwide group, which has been campaigning for the ordination of women in the Catholic Church since 1996, said the document “offers seeds of hope for a church moving away from general and strict doctrinal rules to one of grace and growth”.

Describing Amoris Laetitia as “this challenging and at times poetic document”, it said it was “riddled with an incomplete and painful understanding of feminism, reproductive health, gender and sexual identity”.

The group was encouraged by the document’s “strong condemnation of violence and discrimination against women”.

But while Pope Francis wrote “that he ‘values feminism’, he fails to include the modern sexism upheld by the church’s hierarchy as part of the patriarchal cultures that considered women inferior ”.