WOC responds to Querida Amazonia: Pope Willfully Turns His Back on Women
For Immediate Release: 12 February 2020
Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis’ post-synodal exhortation released today, outlines four “dreams” for the Church and the environment, leaving women and their dreams to the footnotes of the document and his papacy. With Querida Amazonia, the Pope is willfully turning his back on the calls of women for recognition of the sacramental ministries they offer the people of the Amazon and the global Church.
Pope Francis writes that we need “courageous openness to the novelty of the Spirit, who is always able to create something new … Let us be fearless; let us not clip the wings of the Holy Spirit” (69), but despite the testimonies of women from the Amazon and the overwhelming discussion of their bishops throughout the month-long synod process, the Pope again relies on outdated spousal metaphors to deny women their fullness in Christ.
Employing complementarian theology, Pope Francis reduces women’s strengths and gifts to that of “a creature… Mary,” and asserts priestly identity remains in “the figure of a man” (101). The Pope seemingly ignores the synod’s request for more study on the possibility of women deacons, and instead, in the face of sacramental scarcity, calls for prayer for male vocations to priesthood. This shows, yet again, that a synod without the equal voice and votes of women will never produce fruit that satisfies the urgent needs of the people of God.
Recognizing women’s work with diaconal ordination would be the first, most basic step towards righting the wrong of institutional sexism that hobbles our Church as it attempts to respond to the moral crises of our time.
While the Women’s Ordination Conference applauds the Pope’s sincere concern for the global climate catastrophe and its particular threats within the Amazonian region, we find it problematic that the Pope fails to connect the degradation of the earth with the degradation of women in his own Church, and the similar power structures at play.
Despite their second-class status, Pope Francis acknowledges that “women have kept the Church alive for centuries…” (99). We dream of a Church that is truly alive with all of the gifts that women can offer, including their calls to ordained ministry. In this environmental and spiritual crisis, the Church has no time to waste in recognizing women’s equality.
Contact: Kate McElwee, Executive Director