Pope Francis at Ten Years

The actual anniversary is next Monday, March 13, but pundits have been ruminating for a month. Amidst this effusion of commentary, I am going to highlight the articles in which the analysis advances the conversation about Francis and women.

First, of course, is Kate McElwee’s in NCR. What McElwee does is document particular changes over time – and then other ways that Francis has not moved: “While not the fireworks of change that many pray for, nor the revolution that women need.” McElwee considers management, ministry, and Marian metaphor; each makes me remember what was so upsetting as I was reading encyclicals that I found inspiring – in other areas.

Management: I wonder if anyone has studied what Francis means by “function.” In the beginning, Francis did not want to “promote the ‘functionalism’ of women” by giving them top positions. Now? “Just recently Francis said, ‘Here in the Vatican, the places where we have put women are functioning better.’” I am always uneasy with such essentialism, but it’s an improvement over exclusion. Francis has used the power he has to open top Vatican leadership without regard to clerical status or gender.

McElwee also notes here “his increasingly emboldened statements about women’s rights around the world, and a shifting perspective on feminism, a movement he once called ‘over’ and akin to ‘chauvinism in skirts’ but now he says must continue.” That’s the most remarkable change to me, maybe because Francis seemed so ill-informed at the beginning. He was clueless about what mattered the most to me.

Ministry: “Francis has made canonical changes to bring the church in better alignment with the pastoral realities around the world,” McElwee begins, which is a more important insight than the formality it seems to be. Women’s participation as acolytes, catechists, and lectors has been normalized and recognized in canon law.

That change happened more recently than the surprise question at Francis’s meeting in 2016 with the International Union of Superiors General (UISG): would he study the possibility of women deacons?  The exchange with the sisters seemed spontaneous, and resulted in a commission, or actually, two; but nothing has been resolved. Maybe Francis is waiting for “pastoral realities,” which we might argue already exist, based on what women are doing in various ministries.

Ordination to the priesthood? McElwee says, “How can such a pastoral man not hear the cries of women in his own church? What encounter informed him to characterize women’s ordination advocates as operating from a ‘spirit of the isolated conscience,’ as he wrote in Let Us Dream? How can he call for women’s rights in society and not scrutinize his own role as the supreme leader of the largest patriarchy in the world?”  That book came out in 2022, not 2013. McElwee’s “most generous explanation…is that Francis does not believe the church is ready to answer this question.” I’ll answer it as McElwee does not: the persistence of sexism.  

Marian metaphor: carries a lot of weight in McElwee’s analysis: “the metaphors he uses elevate women right out of structures of power.” I would argue that “the papal imagination” has had a sharp dose of reality over the ten years of Francis’s pontificate; women are less “Abstract, distant and put on a pedestal, women are projections, not protagonists” than they were in the early years. Less “mysterious.”

McElwee frames her essay in synodality: “a constellation of synods leading the church both into and out of darkness.” “Murky” and “messy.” She ends: “But today women are appointed to Vatican positions without a headline, cardinals and bishops are openly discussing the question of women’s ordination to the diaconate and priesthood, and at the very least, there are increasing opportunities for the voices of women to be heard. And if there are opportunities for women’s voices to be heard, at least we have a pope who has shown he knows how to listen every now and again.”

I will insert here a comment from theologian Richard Gaillardetz, which was part of a longer reflection on many aspects of this papacy. “In another troubling development, Francis has adopted a deeply problematic theological justification for a male-only priesthood by appealing to Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theory of gender complementarity and his claim that there are distinct Marian and Petrine ecclesial principles active in the church.
 
“The Marian principle refers to the active receptivity characteristic of the whole church while the Petrine principle is exercised by ordained church leaders. The pope has not adequately explained, however, why the whole church can embody the Marian principle but only males may exercise the Petrine principle. Here we find one of the more regrettable instances of continuity with his predecessors.” Yes. I couldn’t have said it any calmer myself.

Two other articles focused entirely on Francis and women. La Croix International assigned reporter Matthieu Lassere, who began: “Has there ever been a pope who has opened up so many doors for women inside the Church?” A boss long ago cautioned me about using a leading question that might evoke an easy reply: “So What?” This one inspired the headline writer to ask “Francis, a feminist pope?” Answer? “Like, NO!”

Once I got over that, the article improved. Lassere finds an unnamed Roman woman who observes, “Unlike his predecessors, whose female friendships were well known, there are no women in his entourage.” Something I didn’t know about them.

He interviews on the record “Laëtitia Calmeyn, one of the first women to be appointed to the Dicastery for Clergy in 2018…Nathalie Becquart, the French woman religious who in February 2021 was named undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops with the right to vote – a first in the Vatican…theologian Anne-Marie Pelletier, a member of the papal deacon commission…Marie Dervin, spokesperson for the Commission of Studies on the Place of Women in the Church, a French initiative launched last June by several Catholic feminist associations…and Italian historian Lucetta Scaraffia, former editor of ‘Donne, Chiesa e Mondo,’ the monthly women’s magazine issued by the Vatican daily, L’Osservatore Romano.” Their comments are predictable, except for Scaraffia, who says “The only good thing he has done is to have extended to all priests the right to absolve the sin of abortion.” I haven’t seen that anywhere else. Lassere adds, “Up until 2016, priests needed explicit permission from their bishop to offer such absolution.”

Finally, Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press brings data to the front in her article. Based on “Vatican statistics and independent surveys,” she concludes that “Pope Francis has significantly increased the Vatican’s female workforce, including in high-ranking positions, but women face continued resistance from the all-male Catholic hierarchy to access leadership positions in the church.” A good-guy, bad-guy
scenario?

Winfield notes women’s absences—from ordination and top dicastery posts—but reports “a marked increase in the number and percentage of women working at the Vatican…from 19.3% in 2013 to 23.4% today…In the Curia alone — the Holy See offices that actually run the universal Catholic Church — the percentage of women has now hit 26%, such that one in four employees is female.” I’m not going to search for a breakdown by level of authority, though I think it’s important and probably available somewhere.

Winfield interviews “Raffaella Petrini, the first-ever female secretary general of the Vatican City State…and a member of the Meriden, Conn.-based Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist,” who said “March 8 during a Women’s Day speech that her nomination had raised eyebrows, ‘more than I expected in my ingenuity,’” as in “ingenue,” I guess.

Winfield also interviews “María Lía Zervino, president of the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations…who along with Petrini was named by Francis as the first-ever female members of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops last year.” These are important positions, providing advice on the appointment of bishops around the world. At a Women’s Day event at the Vatican, Zervino goes on to say, “In my life, I never thought I would be doing this, and it requires a terribly big effort for me because I have to be at a high level that I’m still learning…She said her experience had taught her that the church must train women to be leaders in the hierarchy,” according to Winfield.

To that, I say “really?” We are training ourselves through our activism and our actual jobs. Petrini, “a professor of welfare economics at Rome’s Pontifical Angelicum University,” has a well-developed understanding of collaborative leadership and is putting it in practice. Zervino has not experienced “clerical resistance” on the Bishop commission, but Winfield reports that her organization surveyed female participants in the synod process, and found that “the majority believed they had been listened to, even though obstacles remained…She said 43% of the respondents identified ‘ordained ministers’ as posing the greatest obstacle to the consultation process, evidence that clerics remained resistant to women’s full participation.” But maybe not at the highest levels. That’s encouraging, I suppose.

We can’t say often enough that women are competent actors in our church. Everyone knows, as Winfield says, “Catholic women do the lion’s share of the church’s work in schools, hospitals and passing down the faith to future generations,” and I would add in parishes and in social justice ministries in cities and rural areas, here and around the world. It is an outrage that “ordained ministers” resist women’s leadership, from Pope Francis on down. When we are asked whether ordination is important, think about that. Having the confidence to operate as an equal is what is at stake. This is the conversation we have to have.