Advocates Demand Voting Rights for Women be First Item of Synod Agenda
For immediate release: 25 September 2019
With the release of the list of participants for the Vatican’s upcoming Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region (Oct. 6-27), the Women’s Ordination Conference notes with disappointment and bewilderment the continued lack of voting rights for Catholic sisters and nuns at the assembly. Since 2015, non-ordained religious brothers have been granted voting rights, while their canonical equals, women religious, are denied that privilege. This year, of the 185 voting members of the synod, 0 are women.
The Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) is calling its global membership to write to Cardinal Lorenzo Balldisseri and the Synod office to demand that voting rights for women at the Synod be made the first order of business when the Synod opens its first session on October 7.
“The Synod Fathers should be ashamed to even attempt to tackle such critical issues as climate change and access to the Eucharist without the equal participation of women,” said Kate McElwee, executive director of WOC. “This is not simply a missed opportunity, but a grave error that threatens the credibility of the Synod itself.”
During the 2018 Synod on Youth, the Women’s Ordination Conference organized a demonstration outside of the Vatican calling for voting rights for women with the chant, “Knock, Knock, Who’s there? More than half the Church,” launching a viral campaign for #VotesForCatholicWomen, and a petition garnering nearly 10,000 signatures in just two weeks in support of voting rights for women. The call for votes for religious women was even supported by one of the non-ordained men voting in the 2018 synod, Br. Robert Schieler, who said: “It’s only right. I mean, my God, the sisters are the ones who are every day with young people, more than any other group, in all kinds of capacities.”
Due to the pressure, the bishops approved a final document in 2018 calling the inclusion of women in decision-making structures a “duty of justice” and described the “urgency of an inescapable change” regarding women’s status in the Church.
The Women’s Ordination Conference ask that the Synod office fulfills that urgent duty by making voting rights for women a priority on the first day of the Amazonian Synod. Justice, and the deep needs of the Church, calls for no less.
Contact: Kate McElwee, Executive Director kmcelwee@womensordination.org