“I am in agreement”, he said, according to various reports of the off-the-cuff exchange. “I don’t have any doubts about it….”
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“Pope St. John Paul II after long, long, intense discussions, long reflection, said so clearly”, the pope said.
Francis has also repeatedly said – as he reiterated on Thursday – that he wants to see women assume greater and more authoritative roles in the Catholic Church, but he does not want to “clericalize” them by reducing such growth to mimicking jobs done by men. “So this is opening more than a crack in the door”.
Durocher said a number of bishops he spoke with at the synod were favorable of studying the idea.
Pope Francis greets participants in a special audience with members of the International Union of Superiors General on Thursday in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican.
In 1990, then-Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen announced he was suspending the deacons’ training program in his diocese until the issue of women’s service in the church was addressed.
“It’s very hopeful”, she told NCR.
“Their expertise will be invaluable”, Southwood said of women deacons. There is “no Church without Mary”, he said, “which is why every consecrated woman is an icon of the Church”. They can give homilies and preside at weddings, funerals and baptisms, but they cannot celebrate Mass.
They conduct some – but not all — ministries of the church.
The only reason, therefore, to have deaconesses is to include women in the ranks of the clergy, but when the need is to de-clericalize the church and empower the laity, isn’t it counter productive to add yet another layer of clergy to the church?
The new move is likely to stir fears by conservative Catholics that Francis has put the church on a slippery slope toward the ordaining of female priests. “A deacon could eventually become a priest”.
“Because [a] woman looks at life with true eyes”, said Francis. “I feel like I’ve just jumped out of my socks”, she told NCR.
“I know what it’s like to be among women in leadership in the church”, she said.
“Will it happen in my lifetime?”
Others, however, cautioned not to overinterpret the meaning of the announcement.
The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit author, said reviving women deacons would benefit the whole church. “Lots of people have studied this question already….” That may limit Francis’ options, said Patrick Hornbeck, chairman of the theology department at Fordham University in NY.
Finally, those who are still pushing for women’s ordination to the priesthood admit that women deacons would be the first step. As the order of permanent deacon was re-established in modern times, the order of deaconess could also be rejuvenated.
It mentions “ample evidence” that there were female deacons in the early centuries of the church, including one named Phoebe mentioned in the Book of Romans.
Vatican Radio, however, which is run by the church, portrayed the Pope’s remarks as a broad call “to set up a commission to study the possibility of reinstating female deacons”.
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The pope’s comments were warmly welcomed by the Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC), a US-based group which lobbies for the Church to start appointing women to all levels of the clergy, as the Anglicans have done in recent decades.
