Women can not, however, though historians say women served as deacons in the early Church.
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Pope Francis has hinted that he might consider the idea of allowing women deacons in the Catholic Church. They can not, however, celebrate mass, hear confession, and anoint the sick. The ordination prayer for deacons (unlike that of the prayer for the deaconesses) makes specific prayer for the deacon to be prepared for the “higher office” of the priesthood. “Many experts believe that women should also be able to serve in this role, since there is ample evidence of female deacons in the first centuries, including one named Phoebe who is cited by Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans”, the release from the Vatican press office said. They were restored in the 1960s as part of the Vatican II reforms, but only for men.
The Pope agreed to create an official study commission during a closed-door meeting with some 900 superiors of women’s religious orders.
To which the pope replied: “It would do good for the church to clarify this point. I am in agreement”, the pope said.
“This, I remember”, he said, noting that while the Church has already published documents on the topic of the permanent diaconate which touch on the topic of deaconesses, including a 2002 document from the International Theological Commission, the conclusion for modern times was still “unclear”.
Although allowing women to be ordained as deacons falls short of the group’s eventual goal, Rose-Milavec said she viewed it as a step in the right direction. The pope also gave priests permission to forgive women who have had an abortion and even overturned a rule excluding women from a foot-washing service during Lent despite a centuries-long tradition. He said he once asked a professor to educate him on the role of those early female deacons – including whether they were ordained.
She said about 30,000 women served in USA parishes as “lay ecclesial ministers”, taking on many pastoral and administrative functions.
Father Lombardi also said it was wrong to reduce all the many important things said by the Pope during his meeting with the religious sisters to this one question. Wcela wrote a magazine article in 2012 endorsing the idea. The church teaches that Jesus established the priesthood as an all-male institution when he chose only men as his 12 apostles.
“The women shouldn’t be in that situation yet”, said Gouveia, 65. To me, that matters less than the fact that in a world where women can be presidents of nations, CEOs of corporations, chancellors of universities and administrators of hospitals, the doors of the diaconate are closed to female Catholics. “We men can not look at it so”. “I hope we don’t start from scratch now”.
It appeared that the pontiff, to clarify the roles of women deacons in the history of the Church, wants to have a commission to investigate the circumstances surrounding thewomen in Catholic Church.
Pope Francis called for women to receive equal pay to men back in 2015, according to the Christian Science Monitor, calling the current inequality a “pure scandal”.
The pope was responding to a question in Rome and did not raise the subject himself, Thavis said.
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“Throughout history and continuing today women courageously place their lives in service to the gospel where human life is most vulnerable and human dignity most obscured”, she said.
