Women’s Ordination Conference quoted in Vatican women’s magazine

A Vatican women’s magazine has gently criticized recent remarks by Pope Francis on naming women to positions of authority in the Catholic Church, saying the pontiff touched a “sore point” by again warning against the so-called clericalization of women.

“Women Church World,” a monthly supplement to the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano newspaper, offers a commentary in its January edition on the late 2020 volume Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, a collaborative effort between Francis and British author Austen Ivereigh.

The commentary, authored by former longtime Vatican Radio journalist Romilda Ferrauto and featured on the magazine’s last page, praises Francis’ words in the book about his efforts to appoint more women to Vatican roles.

But it also says the pontiff’s later warning against “clericalizing” women, an admonition that Francis has repeated throughout his eight-year papacy, “touches a sore point [of] mistrust, fear and resistance.”

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Ferrauto writes that women’s criticism of Francis’ comments “were not many, but were harsh.” She mentions a statement from the Women’s Ordination Conference and remarks from Anne Soupa, a French theologian who had applied to the Vatican’s embassy in Paris in 2020 to be the next archbishop of Lyon.

“For Francis, saying that in reality women do not govern because they are not priests is clericalist and disrespectful,” writes Ferrauto.

Read the full article from National Catholic Reporter here.