WOC Celebrates Expanded Voting at Vatican Synod

For Immediate Release: April 26, 2023

Today, in a historic move, the Vatican’s synod office expanded participation in the Synod of Bishops, granting non-ordained lay persons—including women—the right to vote as full members of the body. In an April 26 press conference, Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary-general of the Synod, and Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, relator general of the 2023 and 2024 Synod of Bishops, expressed that this change allows for the participation of 70 non-bishop voting members at the upcoming Vatican synod in October 2023. 

The Women’s Ordination Conference celebrates this development in the church’s history toward greater co-responsibility and equity between women and men at the synod. This is a significant crack in the stained glass ceiling, and the result of sustained advocacy, activism and the witness of the collaborative “Votes for Catholic Women” campaign, of which the Women’s Ordination Conference played a founding role. 

In 2018, WOC led the call for voting rights for women at synods by demonstrating peacefully outside of St. Peter’s Square only to be manhandled and harassed by Vatican police. For years Vatican representatives and bishops resisted, moving the goalpost with every synod as to why women were not allowed to vote. The unspoken reason was always sexism.   

In the near future, we hope that the synod continues to develop into a fully representative body of the people of God. This is an important step on the path toward gender parity, and we will continue our persistent efforts to work for lasting structural changes in the church. As we have said repeatedly during the synodal process: There is no turning back.

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Contact: Kate McElwee, Executive Director kmcelwee@womensordination.org