During a question-and-answer session, Francis was asked why the church excludes women from serving as deacons and why not put together a commission to study the question about reinstating female deacons.
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The order of deacons was reinstituted in the Catholic Church following the reforms of the 1960s, and while deacons cannot celebrate the Eucharist like a priest, a deacon can preach at Mass, preside at weddings and funerals and perform baptisms.
But the idea will face stiff resistance from those who warn that ordaining women as deacons is the first step toward ordaining female priests – which recent popes have ruled out, citing church doctrine.
– The Vatican played down on Friday expectations that Pope Francis might be ready to ordain women as deacons after he had raised hopes among liberal Catholics by promising to set up a commission to study the issue. “I am in agreement”, the pope said. Fr. Lombardi added that “it is wrong to reduce all the important things the Pope said to the religious women to just this question”.
The apostle Paul mentions a woman deacon, Phoebe, in his letter to the Romans.
In response to a question about the ordination of women to the diaconate, the Pope recounted remarks by a Syrian scholar on the roles of deaconesses in the early Church, including the baptism of women by immersion and the examination of the bodies of women who told the bishop that their husbands had abused them. “Thank you for telling me so courageously and for doing so with that smile”, Francis told the group as he reaffirmed women’s lack of influence in church decision-making. “Which means that the expansion of the feminine role in the Church will follow a different way than the canonical one, which leads to the priesthood and then to the episcopate”, she said. “And I think the church’s clarity about the male-female difference is real important”. Deacons must be men older than 35, and they may be married (though if a deacon’s wife dies, he is expected to remain celibate). “This news fills me with huge joy”. The answer, he said, “was a bit obscure”.
“It would be interesting to see if (Pope Francis’ commission) will find that there is historical precedent and therefore a modern place for women who may be called to ordained service”, she said.
“The women’s question is the priority question for a church that preaches justice”, Hunthausen told a meeting of the National Association of Permanent Deacon Directors. “It displays Francis’ openness to scholarship, to history, and, most importantly, to the needs of the church”.
However, Pope Francis warned the sisters about the danger of clericalism, which he described as “a sinful attitude”, but one which is “like the tango, it takes two”.
The move could result in a historic opening of more prestigious religious positions within the church to women, who now have only a limited range of positions from which to choose.
The sisters applauded when the pope suggested such priests pay local women in need of a job and let the sisters teach, care for the poor, heal the sick. There are about 13,000 deacons in the United States, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. After the 5th century, the diaconate became a stopping ground for men preparing to be priests, according to the Vatican Radio. “It will hardly invalidate the argument that women can not be ordained to the ministerial priesthood, but it certainly challenges it”, Tokarz wrote.
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The pope responded by saying that he had spoken about the matter “some years ago. with a good wise professor” who had studied the use of “deaconesses” in the early church.
