After Years of Debate, Vatican Says No to Women Deacons, at Least for Now
But a papal commission examining the question said further study was required, and advised that women should be given other leadership roles in the Catholic Church.
For nearly a decade, two successive commissions of church experts studiously examined if women could serve as deacons, an ordained ministry in the Roman Catholic Church.
Their grinding deliberations, which began under Pope Francis, raised hopes that women might be allowed, after being excluded from leadership roles for nearly two millenniums, to join Catholicism’s all-male clergy.
On Thursday, the second panel finally announced its recommendation: No, at least for now.
The 12-person committee, which included five women, said that its recommendation “excludes the possibility” of ordaining women as deacons, who are permitted to preach and administer weddings, funerals and baptisms, but not to celebrate Mass.
The committee’s president, Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi, left open the possibility of revising the decision in the future. He said in a letter to Pope Leo XIV, Francis’s successor, that further study was required and suggested that other leadership roles could be created specifically for women.
Though the move did not come as a surprise, it was still a blow to campaigners who had hoped that the Vatican, under Leo’s leadership, might allow for the inclusion of women in the lowest rungs of the church ministerial hierarchy.
“This is a lesson we’ve learned many times over, of just how far the Vatican will go to deny women equality,” said Kate McElwee, the executive director of Women’s Ordination Conference, a Washington-based Catholic group campaigning for women to become priests.
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