U.S. Catholic: Has the synod on synodality changed anything?

By Heidi Schlumpf

As the delegates to the Synod on Synodality met in Rome for the first day of the month-long summit to determine the future of the Catholic Church, down the street several dozen women held a gathering of their own. Representing four continents and dressed in episcopal purple, the women unfurled a giant banner with a message they hoped the synod delegates would act upon: “Ordain women.”

“Don’t give up the dream,” the women sang while TV cameras rolled.

The night before, women had held a prayer vigil at a symbolic Roman church, the Basilica of St. Praxedes, whose Chapel of St. Zeno contains a ninth-century mosaic of “Theodora Episcopa,” or Bishop Theodora.

Speaking during that service on October 3, Kate McElwee, executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, said she experienced both hope and sadness as the synod got underway, the former “because I believe in it and want to believe in it,” and the latter because she knows that too often clericalism silences women’s voices.

Read the full story at U.S. Catholic.