From America Media— Explainer: The history of women lectors and altar servers—and what Pope Francis has changed

Pope Francis today changed church law to allow women to be permanently installed as lectors or acolytes—essentially, readers, distributors of Communion and assistants at Mass and the sacraments.

While women have performed these ministries at Mass for decades, they had until now been barred from being permanently installed in these roles. Such permanent installation, made official in a church ceremony, is extremely rare for lay people.

More commonly, women have been allowed to serve in these roles temporarily at the discretion of the local bishop. Today’s change in canon law prevents bishops from choosing to restrict women from these ministries.

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Does this have anything to do with women’s ordination?

It depends on whom you ask. In his letter today, Pope Francis referred to Pope John Paul II’s 1994 declaration that women could never be ordained as priests. Francis wrote, “If, with respect to ordained ministries, the church ‘has no power in any way to confer priestly ordination on women’…it is possible for nonordained ministries, and today it seems appropriate to overcome this reservation.”

In a press release, the Women’s Ordination Conference, a group that advocates for women to be ordained as priests, said that the conference welcomed the pope’s recognition that “some ministries in the Church are founded on the common priesthood of all the baptized. WOC prays that he follows that logic, which is sound theology, to its natural conclusion: that all genders have ‘put on Christ’ through the sacrament of baptism and should not be barred from fulfilling an authentically discerned call to ordination.”

Read the full article from America here. You can also read WOC’s press release on the Vatican’s announcement here.