What the Pope is saying about women
The paragraphs of the “Evangelii Gaudium” that are dedicated to women’s role in the Church, reject the idea of women priests but ask for the sacred order to be treated as a service not as power ANDREA TORNIELLI VATICAN CITY Some paragraphs of the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium are helpful in shedding light on what the Pope means when he speaks about valuing women’s role in the Church. But it also shows how that the extravagant and highly clericalist idea of consecrating women bishops is light years away from Francis’ vision of things. Francis goes further than stressing his rejection of the consecration of female bishops, which John Paul II reiterated in his Apostolic Letter “Ordinatio sacerdotalis” of May 1994 (one of the briefer and denser documents of his pontificate): he adds some reflections on service and power. Most importantly, Francis writes that “the Church acknowledges the indispensable contribution which women make to society through the sensitivi...