Cardinal calls for more women in leading positions in Church

The Church would be “mad” not to use women’s talents, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich said at the first meeting of the “mentoring programme” to increase the percentage of women in leading positions in the German Church, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

The meeting was organised by the Bishops’ Conference and 14 German dioceses along with the Hildegardis Association in Munich. “We need a new image of what the Church is supposed to be – namely a World Church at whose head men and women from all cultures work together,” the cardinal explained.

“We would be mad to refrain from using women’s talents,” he said, recalling that research had shown that work groups made up of men and women achieved better results. The fact that only men could be ordained in the Church was “not helping the Church to come across as a pioneer of equal rights”, Cardinal Marx admitted, but women should still push for important and influential roles.