Home » Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research scholar to answer Pope Francis’s call for historical evidence of women clergy

Catholic Institute scholar to answer Pope Francis’s call for historical evidence of women clergy

Dr. Ally Kateusz, cultural historian and author of Mary & Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership, will present new research on ancient artefacts that depict women priests at the altar in three of Christendom’s most important orthodox churches on July 2 and 3 at the Society of Biblical Literature at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Dr. Kateusz will demonstrate that an ivory reliquary box dated around 430 CE depicts a woman priest at the altar in Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Two more ancient artefacts also depict women at altars—at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the “Hagia Sophia” in Constantinople—and these are the three very oldest artefacts to portray Christians at the altars of real churches. Dr. Kateusz says, “They illustrate that early Christian women routinely performed as clergy in orthodox churches.”

While in Rome, Dr. Kateusz will lead a group to the Lateran Baptistery to reveal a hidden mosaic that depicts Mary as a bishop. Around 650 CE, Popes John IV and Theodore I commissioned this mosaic in the apse above the altar of Mary wearing an episcopal pallium, her arms raised as the liturgical leader and role model for women clergy. In 1916, the Vatican hid the mosaic, and most of the well-documented red tesserae comprising the cross on Mary’s pallium were removed.

The Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research will hold a book launch and press reception to ask: “Why does Pope Francis ask for historical evidence of women clergy whilst the Vatican itself has literally hidden the evidence”? Dr. Kateusz will also answer questions regarding the fresco of a woman bishop in the San Gennaro catacombs, seen in the UK Channel 4 documentary Jesus’s Female Disciples: The New Evidence. This fresco was recently restored after being concealed until 1977.

Schedule of events in Rome:

Tuesday, July 2

  • 9am: Dr. Kateusz, “Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome as a Visualization of the Anastasis in Jerusalem: Parallels in Women in the Liturgy.” Dr. Kateusz will answer Pope Francis’s call for historical evidence of women clergy. SBL International Meeting. Sala Pro E – Congress, Gregorian University

Wednesday July 3

  • 9am: The hidden mosaic of Mary Bishop with Dr. Kateusz, San Venantius Chapel, Lateran Baptistery
  • 4pm: Dr. Kateusz, ‘Case Study of the Feminist Hermeneutics of Suspicion: The Woman at the Altar inside Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome’. SBL, Sala Gonzaga B3 – Congress, Gregorian University
  • 5.30pm: Book launch & press reception: The Anglican Centre in Rome, Piazza del Collegio Romano, 2

Contact:

Miriam Duignan: T +44 7970 926910 E miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com
Dr. Ally Kateusz: T +1.816.729.8751 E ally.kateusz@wijngaardsinstitute.com
Dr. Luca Badini Confalonieri: T: + 44 7446 283699 E luca.badini@wijngaardsinstitute.com