Women priests, wine, and wolves

In a connection that Roman Catholic woman priest, Diane Dougherty fostered, (she described the serendipitous networking as feeling “like Mary and Elizabeth… a baby is jumping in my womb……maybe all of ours”), I had the opportunity to sit down with Forbes writer, Cathy Huyghe on her recent trip to Rome. Cathy is a dynamic woman involved in various organizations and efforts to empower women and girls, fight sex-trafficking, and not to mention, writes about the culture and business of the wine industry. Who could ask for more? 

These three bottles of wine, made from Sangiovese, Syrah, and Merlot grapes, were part of a gift from the FONDAZIONE to the Pope. Photo Credit: Cathy Huyghe

I met with Cathy fewer than twenty-four hours after she arrived to Rome and it seemed like she had already held dozens of meeting, fluttering between Vatican offices and various embassies.  The main focus of her time in Rome was to attend a meeting organized by Franco Ricci of the Fondazione Italiana Sommelier as well as the Italian wine guide Bibenda, and attend an audience with the Pope. Cathy is interested in wine as a metaphor, and particularly in the ways Pope Francis has used wine in his messages.

In Rome, it is not uncommon to have meetings with people passing through; many friend-of-friend connections come alive and over espresso one must uncover how we both got here. It was a lovely, lively meeting: we found we share several paths and passions, and will each be able to help one another in our collective work in elevating and promoting women in the Catholic Church.  (+1 for Diane the match-maker!) 

Cathy described our meeting on her blog:

Another coffee, a final one, was with an amazing woman, who is very young, with a spine of steel for the perfectly contrarian work she is doing. You have a sense, looking at her initially, that she is a lamb surrounded by a pack of wolves.

And guess what? The metaphor is here too. Those wolves think that they could smell her blood in the water. But she has a heart of her own, a powerful pounding one that beats for a mission. She survives. And so does the mission.