Since his election, the Pope has made noises about wanting to see a greater role for women in the Church. But for many of those hoping for change, this papacy has so far proved a bitter disappointment, with Francis talking the talk but failing to walk the walk
The year is 2025, or perhaps it’s 2030. Francis is gone; we have a new pope and, like all leaders, he must decide on the priorities that will dominate his time in office. Across hundreds of years and hundreds of popes, there have been many priorities. But one agenda has never been top of the pile for any pontiff. Sadly, it is an agenda that could perhaps have changed the terrible trajectory of the Church’s path in recent years, stemmed the avalanche of decline in its credibility, and circumvented the increasing perception of it as an obsolete curiosity rather than a radical voice in a fast-moving world. That agenda is women. If a pope had made it a priority, things might now look very different.
The Catholic Church is a masterclass in patriarchy. Power is concentrated overwhelmingly in the hands of male clerics. In a touch of sheer genius, women were given status – the semblance of reverence on the pedestal of Mary – but almost completely barred from decision-making or authority. Through history, of course, countless women have found a way round Rome’s rules – think the seventeenth-century Mexican nun Juana Inés de la Cruz, who championed education for women and was ostracised by the bishops; or the English reformer Mary Ward, whose same idea a few years earlier had met with the same sort of reception. Mary Ward was declared Venerable in 2009; the Church has a track record in posthumously “sanitising” its radical women, or reframing them in a way that suits its own narrative: Mary Magdalene was far too powerful as Christ’s wealthy patron and right-hand woman (the true story) but as a reformed sex worker forever regretting her “sins” (the rewrite) she fitted the bill perfectly.
In Rome, where I was just before its lockdown, the women who work for something better seemed weary, some of them almost dejected. One day, like Mary Ward, these women will be seen as warriors of much-needed reform; but for now they are sidelined and their cause is belittled. “It’s very lonely doing this work, in this place, at this time. There certainly aren’t a lot of supporters for us in Rome,” says Kate McElwee, executive director of Women’s Ordination. A photo on its website of its inaugural conference shows a large room packed with women, nuns included, and men, priests included, who believed the time for change was nigh. The year was 1975 and the scent of revolution was in the air. Forty-five years later, hopes have been raised and dashed one too many times.
