AP: Vatican will prepare document on role of women in Catholic Church leadership

By Nicole Winfield

The Vatican said Tuesday that its doctrine office will prepare a document on women in leadership roles in the Catholic Church, a new initiative to respond to longstanding demands by women to have a greater say in the church’s life.

The document will be written by the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith as its contribution to Pope Francis’ big church reform process, now entering its second main phase with a meeting of bishops in October, known as a synod.

The Vatican announced the details of the doctrinal document shortly after its news conference — led by four men — on the preparatory work for the October meeting, leaving journalists no chance to ask for more details about it.

A group pressing for women’s ordination promptly dismissed the significance of it as “crumbs,” noting that ordained men would once again be making decisions about women’s roles in the church.

…Women’s Ordination Conference, which advocates for ordaining women priests, said the relegation of the issue of women deacons to the doctrine office was hardly the mark of a church looking to involve women more.

“The urgency to affirm women’s full and equal place in the church cannot be swept away, relegated to a shadowy commission, or entrusted into the hands of ordained men at the Vatican,” the group said in a statement.

Read the full article on the Voice of America website.