A record number of women will participate in next month's Synod of Bishops on the Word of God. Pope Benedict XVI has named six female scholars as "experts" and 19 women as observers, making it the largest group of women ever appointed to a synod assembly.
There were no women among the experts at the 2005 Synod on the Eucharist and just one at the Synod on Religious Life in 2001.
The women figure in the list of papal appointments to the forthcoming synod published on 6 September. They are among a total of 41 experts and 38 "auditors" or observers.
There was further surprise on Tuesday when the Pope named Cardinal George Pell of Sydney to be one of the three rotating presidents for the three-week meeting. Cardinal Pell, 67, is to replace Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay, who the Vatican said was "unable to participate" in the synod. Sources said the 63-year-old Indian cardinal would be receiving medical attention for a heart ailment.
In June the Pope chose Cardinal Gracias along with Cardinals William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Odilo Scherer, Archbishop of São Paulo, as presidents. Presidents are not required to be scripture scholars, and none is.
Cardinal Pell's appointment was seen as a Vatican vote of confidence for the Australian as he continues to battle accusations that he mishandled several high-profile cases of clergy sex abuse. It also re-kindled rumours, begun during the papal visit to Sydney last July, that the Pope was planning to name Cardinal Pell to a permanent post in Rome.
The women experts include three scripture scholars - Professor Bruna Costacurta and Sr Nuria Calduch Benages, both of whom teach at Rome's Gregorian University, and Sr Mary Jerome Obiorah, professor at the major seminary in Onitsha, Nigeria. Also appointed was Sr Sara Butler, professor of dogma at St Joseph's Seminary in New York and one of only two female members of the Vatican-sponsored International Theological Commission. The other two women experts at the synod are Marguerite Léna, philosophy teacher at the Madeleine Daniélou school for girls in Paris; and Sr Germana Strola, a Trappist nun in Italy.
The lone female among 16 experts at the Synod on Religious Life was Sr Enrica Rosanna, who has since become a co-undersecretary of the Congregation for Religious.
"The Vatican is to be congratulated," said FutureChurch, a US-based reform group that has been lobbying bishops around the world over the last two years to include more women experts at the synod. "We look forward to the day when half of the designated experts are women, rather than 15 per cent," the group said in a statement.
Among the other experts appointed to the synod are Br Enzo Bianchi, founder of the Bose Ecumenical Community in northern Italy; Fr Stephen Pisano, rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome; Fr Klemens Stock, secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission; and Fr Giorgio Zevini, dean of theology at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome and author of the Synod's working paper. Experts take part in small group discussions and assist the Synod officers on technical and theological questions. Neither they nor observers have a vote. Only bishops and representatives of male religious orders may vote.
The Vatican said Pope Benedict would preside at the Synod's opening Mass on 5 October at the Basilica of St Paul's Outside the Walls, rather than at St Peter's, highlighting the Pauline Year which he inaugurated in June.
n At a seminar for English-speaking journalists hosted by Rome's Pontifical University of the Holy Cross this week, Philip Goyret, assistant dean of theology at the university, said that the Vatican would never be able to ordain women, but that it had not done enough to give women a greater role within the Church. "There are issues - and not a few - in which the Church arrives late," he said.