Miriam Duignan, The Tablet – New Hall Festival, Saturday 11^th July 2026

Thank you Amanda and to The Tablet for organising this fantastic festival and for the opportunity to speak to you today. Thanks to the New Hall School for hosting us in these wonderful surroundings. And a special thank you to Root & Branch who helped to get me here today.

My name is Miriam Duignan, I am the Executive Director of the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research. When not at my day job, I can also be found in Rome campaigning on behalf of Women’s Ordination Worldwide. This often means spending time in police stations around St. Peter’s Square. If you saw pink smoke over the Vatican at last year’s conclave, you may have spotted me there. And yes, we were detained by the police after this event too for the crime of “upsetting the cardinals before they went into their conclave”. Such an offense isn’t actually written into Italian law but nonetheless, the Roman police were instructed by the Vatican to find and detain us for having staged an event that made global news asking questions about women’s ordination that they did not want raised.

But back to my day job. The Institute is named after our founder Dr John Wijngaards who was a Dutch priest, theologian, and the former Vicar General of Mill Hill Missionaries. He resigned from the priesthood in 1998 in protest of the ban on women’s ordination and set up the Institute to help Catholics everywhere to understand the truth of our tradition and our theology. We compile educational resources on issues where official Church teachings have not kept pace with contemporary knowledge and lived experience. This includes studies on same sex relationships, contraception, governance in the church and of course our largest body of work on women in ministry.

We have copies of John’s 36th and final book with us today and we’re giving a small number of copies away for free. So please pick one up at our exhibition stand. The book is titled WHY CHRIST REJECTS ALL CHURCH PREJUDICE AGAINST WOMEN and includes contributions from eight women from around the world who write about the consequences of the ban on ordination that they see in their communities.

I am here with you this morning to talk about: “The question that will not go away—women’s ordination, theology and development”. And the four main themes from this event that I will explore in relation to this question are the following:

• Catholic Social Teaching—Acting for Justice, peace, solidarity and human dignity
• The Church’s credibility and mission
• Faith in Action & rediscovering a living faith—and of course:
• Leadership and the future of ministry and the church

The reason the question of women’s ordination will not go away is because the reasons we are given to exclude women priests do not make sense, they do not stand up to scrutiny and they are not based on truth and justice. I actually take it as a very hopeful sign of health that Catholics everywhere are increasingly questioning this injustice and so many of you in this room today.

Let’s start with the basics—what do we mean when we say women’s ordination?

I am referring to what is known as the 7th sacrament—that of Holy Orders. The only sacrament that every Catholic woman is banned from receiving. Ordination is the anointing by a Bishop to initiate a vocation of service as a minister of the church. There is only one sacrament of holy orders but it has three degrees—you start as a deacon and then comes priesthood. Some also progress to be bishops. So, when I say women’s ordination, you can picture a deacon, a priest or even a bishop—the full role call.

We heard a lot about Catholic Social Teaching yesterday and we are here in the New Hall School whose focus is on activism and encouraging their students to stand up for what they believe in—especially those values of our Catholic faith.

It may not have happened to the young people here yet, but at some point, someone will question your catholic faith because of the injustice that the wider world sees in its treatment of women. You will find yourself—as I often do—trying to justify why you stay in this church. And the answer is because we believe that the good in our faith and the mission we seek to fulfil, compels us to stay and to hope, pray and to act to bring about necessary change.

I have to question how we can really be known as a church of justice, peace, dignity and solidarity when the official teaching about women and their place in the church—and society—is so blatantly based on prejudice and so contradicts our core values and beliefs?

And I ask myself, how can we claim to have a living faith when our exclusion of women from ministry is based on the very tainted and toxic teachings of a small group of medieval men. When studying the medieval theologians whose writings were used to justify the ban on women priests, what is striking is that only seven out of 29 mentioned Jesus in their pronouncements on why women must be banished from the altar. The rest were unanimous in believing women to be unfit for priesthood because of what most referred to as their “defective, inferior nature”.

We may not hear these words uttered out loud anymore but the church law banning women from ministry that came into effect ONLY in the 11th century is still in place. And for as long as we uphold that ban, the Church is effectively still condoning the terrible theology that underpins it.

In 2015, I spent a sabbatical semester at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley alongside 90 seminarians, mostly young men training for the priesthood. I took the same fundamental courses in catholic ethics and social teaching as our future priests.  Although I was inspired and filled with fervour from the immersion in the best of catholic teaching, I started questioning the contradictions I witnessed first-hand. Coming to the unfortunate conclusion that as a Church we simply do not practise what we preach.

In our liberation theology class, we were sent out into the world—I did an evening shift in the Jesuit funded food van that served the homeless of Berkeley. Our professor drummed it into me that when faced with difficult situations and challenging personalities, we are called as Catholics to see the face of Jesus in everyone we encounter. It is a powerful image and a lovely way to look at our fellow humans who are suffering. But then it struck me—why is it that this call to see Jesus in everyone we meet cannot extend to women being able to represent Jesus as priests?

Now is a good time to list out the top 4 greatest hits in terms of modern-day excuses we most frequently hear against women’s ordination—are you ready?

First and foremost, in our modern-day repertoire of reasons given to justify an all-male priesthood is that a woman cannot act “in persona Christi” because the priest must physically resemble the maleness of Jesus. According to the teaching authority of the Vatican:

“The priest acts in the person of Christ during the Eucharist; Because Christ is male, the Church maintains that the sacramental sign requires a male to represent the Bridegroom”.

The Congregation, therefore, is the bride in this equation. Meaning that during the sacrament of eucharist when the priest is symbolically marrying the congregation including all the men, women and children in it.

I have mentioned this theory to priest friends who shudder at the weirdness of the imagery and are insulted at the suggestion that their vocation is rooted in their anatomy and that the mass requires them to assume a bridegroom role they never signed up for.

This so-called “nuptial mystery” (and yes it really is quite the mystery) was brought to the fore ONLY in 1986 as part of Pope John Paul II’s efforts to devise creative theological ideas to stop women claiming a vocation to priesthood.

This reductionist approach to ordination, not only sullies the sacrament of holy orders, it also sullies baptism. This key sacrament in Catholicism is where we are all anointed with the same oil and initiated into the community of believers as equals.

If you’ve attended a Christening or Confirmation recently, you likely heard a reading from St Paul’s letter to the Galatians that says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

This key teaching emphasizes that all divisions of race, social class, and gender vanish, as every believer is united as one in Christ. By reading it, the church publicly pledges to welcome the child and develop that child without prejudice or earthly distinctions.

But surely this runs contrary to the claim that a priest must resemble the physical maleness of Christ, as if this was his most defining characteristic and as if the validity of the mass was somehow tied to his maleness.

Now, on to excuse number 2: we are told that the church has no authority to change a constant tradition that dates back to the founding of the church.

The big problem here is that the Vatican cannot prove a constant practice of a male only priesthood. On the contrary, from the beginnings of the church, women were authorized to lead faith communities and yes they definitely did administer the sacraments.

Some women are documented as acting in what is now considered a priestly role as late as the 14th century. You can read all about it in our online academic library containing all relevant evidence (I should warn you we have 2,000 documents on this question), www.womenpriests.org.

Recently Pope Leo said that women cannot be priests because Jesus only chose men as his Apostles (I expected more of him honestly). This assertion feeds into the popular myth that the priesthood somehow started at the last supper with Jesus choosing only 12 men to represent him. We know that women were named and revered as Jesus’s apostles too—and the definition of the title, apostle, is simply: “a messenger who is sent forth”.

The prime example of course is that Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene and she is officially recognised by the church as the “Apostle to the Apostles”.

We also know that Jesus did not ordain anyone as a priest, let alone create a male-only leadership rule. When Jesus said, “do this in memory of me,” he was speaking to both men and women gathered at his last supper.

The fact is that the equality of men and women is the true tradition of the Catholic Church—and would have remained a constant practice had the Roman Empire not taken it over and expelled female leaders. Instead of dismantling the structures of an empire, the hierarchy of our Church replicated them and then enshrined them into doctrine—structures that they continue to refuse to correct. The Canon Law that bans women from the altar came into place over 1000 years after the death of Jesus—there is no constant tradition of a male-only priesthood by anyone’s definition.

Let’s return now to the present to expose excuse Number 3 for why women cannot be ordained. This is a big one for Pope Leo. That is, the claim that reinstating women as ministers is a risk to the unity of the church, and may cause schism.

Firstly—when was our church ever unified? From the popes in Avignon to just this week with the excommunication of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), the notion of unity seems more of a myth than reality.

And secondly—we need to bear in mind that every institution and profession that has sought to keep women out and maintain an all-male rule has claimed that allowing women entry would cause upset and that it would cause an exodus of men. A prime example of this is the Anglican Church. Do you know how many times I have been told that allowing women to be priests in the Anglican faith has not “fixed their problems” and therefore we shouldn’t bother?

The reality is that all churches and all communities are messy—wasn’t its Pope Francis who told us to make a mess? The Anglican church—likes all churches—had problems before they welcomed women back into priestly roles. Women should not be scapegoated for whatever challenges and crises Anglicanism has faced over the decades.

The truth is, that excluding women and going against our own tradition and ethical teaching is too high a price to pay for a very selective unity. So many Catholics have left the Church because they cannot tolerate the sexism it stands for—yet when right wing groups who want to maintain a system of male supremacy threaten to leave in protest, it is women who are expected to bear this cost and be silent in the service of not upsetting some minority factions.

And finally—our 4th of the greatest hits of excuses, is the claim that women should not be ordained because it will “clericalize” them. This suggests that women will assume the worst traits of a small minority of clerics who are preoccupied with status, titles, privilege and power.

But if clericalism has become such a risk to all potential priests, why does the church still ordain men? We still pray for vocations for men and new applicants are warmly received believing that their vocation to service is real and hoping—maybe assuming—they will end up being good priests. So why is it that when a woman expresses the same calling, she will be accused of seeking clerical privilege and power.

Tied into claims of clericalism is an equally false claim that only Western campaigners are clamouring for women priests and that these demands are off putting to women in the “global south.” The idea that non-Western Catholics do not want equality was completely disproven by the Synod. In parish feedback documents submitted to the Vatican’s synodal office, almost all of them mentioned the status of women as the number one concern. Because parishioners—male and female alike—see women doing the work to keep churches running and object to the fact that, should they express a vocation to full time official ministry, these women would be rejected solely on the basis of their sex.

This current chorus of objections to ordination of women fail to respect core tenets of our faith.

For example—we believe that priesthood is a vocation:

There are thousands of women around the world who know that their true vocation in life is to be a priest and their spiritual calling and talent for priesthood is real. Solidarity means that women’s sense of vocation must be taken seriously. They must be considered on an equal basis to men based on equal human dignity and equal baptismal dignity.

The Church accepts and encourages the vocation to religious life—there are over 600,000 religious sisters in the world today. Why is it that this vocation is respected but the call to ordination is not?

If it were true that God does not call women to priestly ministry, why not test that by letting the system that helps men discern also help women discern?

And when it becomes clear that many women are as called, as devoted, as capable as the men, why would we bar them? Justice also demands that Catholics have access to women ministers as well as men. The people of God deserve the best pastoral care in their moments of joy, crisis and suffering, and those kinds of gifts exist beyond biological sex.

Ultimately, for as long as there is a need for priests, for as long as priesthood is a requirement to administer the sacraments key and lead parishes—women should absolutely be among their number.

We believe in Dignity and Justice:

We heard yesterday about the moral leadership of Pope Leo in his recent encyclical on AI and the rights and dignity of workers. Catholic Social Teaching also references the solidarity of participation—that is the ethical commitment to shared responsibility and active inclusion. But how can the Catholic Church be a credible voice for the rights of workers when it is women who do the majority of the church’s labour yet are not allowed to receive an official blessing and institutional support for what constitutes priestly work?

It is women who are compensating for the current shortage of priests in parishes throughout the world. They are already ministering in parishes, hospitals and schools in every corner of the Catholic world. These are the people we all know—the hospital chaplains who sit for days praying with a dying patient and their family but have to call in a priest to administer the last rites.

These are the religious sisters in remote areas who cannot lead their communities in celebrating the Eucharist at Sunday mass and must wait for a male priest to fly in to “bless the bread”.

These are the parish catechists who work for months to prepare parents and children for baptisms and confirmations but would never be allowed to administer those sacraments with the families they are closest to. A man must always step into every sacramental situation and take over. The message we receive loud and clear is that women can support and serve under strict supervision but must always defer to the authority and control of men. This is undignified, unjust and a betrayal of our own teaching. Rather than include women as priests, it seems the institutional church would prefer to limit access to the sacramentality that is essential to Catholic life.

Everyone here is dedicated to building peace and tackling poverty but it is women who bear the greatest burdens of war, disease, poverty, and violence because these harms are rooted in the belief that women are not deserving of equality. Until the Church confronts its own sexism, it cannot fully address the causes of human suffering. By teaching and modelling women’s inequality, it helps sustain the conditions that make such suffering possible.

The Catholic church should be leading the global conversation around misogyny and condemning violence against women and girls. But instead, the 1.2 billion Catholics and the surrounding culture see Catholicism grant a spiritual stamp of approval for disordered male-female relations that contribute to negative, sexist socialization.

And so, we must examine the church’s credibility both to us personally and to the world. How many people in this room have had moments when you want to run for the hills and leave this all behind? But we cannot abandon the ship—the Holy See is just too powerful and influential and its leadership is betraying the will and the ethics of its people. How much more powerful would calls for peace and equality be coming from an institution that wholly and credibility practiced what it preaches?

For us to develop into a more just and living church we must face the fact that at the root of this issue lies the desire (by a small but powerful minority) to maintain an exclusively male realm. We must recognise the psychological issues and societal damage that makes some men seek refuge from a world in which women are equal. And for many, the perfect place of refuge is the institutional church where they can believe inequality is sanctioned by God. Is refusing to ordain women, at the end of the day, a matter of the power and security of a few men? And if so, that’s a terrible spiritual burden to inflict upon all of us. We must take a stand against our church becoming a bastion of bigotry.

The future of leadership requires us to be vigilant against tokenism and trinkets of hope and false progress:

The first example of this is the endless debate and years of Vatican commissions to study women deacons. Great efforts have been made to push for the diaconate for women to be reinstated and to avoid altogether the discussion of women ever becoming priests.

Some will claim this can be justified because there is so much evidence for women deacons and less so for priests. But we must remember that there is no evidence for male priests in the first centuries of the church. In fact, there was no such concept or title of priest until around the year 400.

There are of course women who have a vocation to be deacons and not priests. The same is true of men of course, but they have the luxury of making that choice.  If a woman feels a calling to be a deacon, that’s wonderful and she should have our full support. But we can’t stop at the diaconate in our quest for full equality.

And secondly—The recent appointments by Pope Francis and Pope Leo of women to leadership roles in various Dicasteries have been celebrated as signs of progress for women in the church. But, while it is wonderful to see women receive promotions, we remember that administration is not ordination. In fact, it could be argued that administration is a way to keep women away from ordination. Why? Because every elevation of a woman is meant to inspire gratitude to the pope and church authorities. That expectation that we should be grateful (and be implication also be quiet) can easily be weaponized against those of us who continue to push for true equality. How easily we can be labelled as asking for too much, which inspires a backlash against church reformers and women’s ordination campaigners.

Let’s not forget that the three women who head Vatican offices now are still under the supervision of men, and their influence in the small circles of clerics they meet will not address the global crisis we are faced with.

The Catholic tradition has a strong doctrine on the primacy of conscience which states that as human beings we are endowed with the capacity to discern between right and wrong. It follows then that, if we believe the ban on women’s ordination is wrong, we are obliged by our conscience to vociferously object.

And so—what are we supposed to do about this? Well, you tell me. We are in a room filled with experts. And we need every one of you. There is no wrong way to play your part in the pursuit of justice for women in our church.

We need the priests who push the boundaries to let women preach despite that being banned; the theologians who continue to develop theology that supports women’s full equality; the reform groups who organize events that foster dialogue and help raise awareness; the teachers who encourage students to ask questions about women and give them honest answers. We need the campaigners who carry banners saying what so many people are thinking, risking detainment and arrest. And, in an ideal world we need Bishops who we know to be sympathetic—to do more than just pray for us. They are the ones who can lobby the Vatican and who knows—even start a trend of ordaining women themselves—they can’t fire them all!

Regardless of what you feel most called to do, we must be a people who never stop asking the question—Why—for God’s sake—are we not ordaining women?

The post The Question that Will Not Go Away—Women’s Ordination, Theology and Development appeared first on Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research.

Dr Luca Badini Confalonieri – 17 December 2025

The Synodal process has been hijacked. One of the main discussion points throughout the Synod was the urgent need to increase women’s access to church ministries, with indications that the prospect of restoring women deacons was a real possibility. Instead, a committee of 10 Vatican insiders — plus not one, but two Popes — decided against it.

This is evidence that Catholics everywhere — even Synodal participants themselves — have been kept in the dark. Below is a forensic examination of all the machinations to deceive and deny women’s role in the church and how the Vatican has lied about their decision-making process. Including the difficult question we have to ask:

Did this story of subterfuge come about because Pope Francis did not want the sexism behind the decision to ruin the ‘spirit of synodality’?

But first and foremost, the claim that women were not sacramentally ordained as deacons is false. The historical evidence should not be denied. So why is the Vatican allowing members of the latest papal study commission on women deacons to repeat that line?[1]

The Vatican has created their own version of history but here is the truth:

• historical documents (such as the 8^thcentury codex Barberini Gr 336 [Barb.gr.336, held in the Vatican Library itself and fully digitalised]) confirm that rites for the ordination of women deacons exist which contained the ritual features exclusively used for ordinations to the so-called “major” orders of the diaconate, presbyterate, and episcopate (as distinct from the ordination rites to the minor orders such as porter, lector, etc.).
• Specifically, those ordinations of women as deacons took place in the sanctuary, in front of the altar and during the Eucharistic Liturgy immediately after the Anaphora, and included the imposition of the bishop’s hands – all elements unique and identical to the ordination of male deacons, presbyters, and bishops.
• Accordingly, those women received an ordination to the “major” orders equivalent to their male counterpart: a ‘sacramental’ ordination, in today’s theological language.
• If their ordination rite was ‘not sacramental’, neither was the analogous rite used for male deacons, and those – containing the very same features unique to ordinations to major orders – used for male priests and bishops.
• historical precedent alone is enough to justify the reinstatement of the sacramental ordination of women as deacons: if it was done in the past, it can be done again.
• And, in fact, it has been done: the Orthodox Church in Zimbabwe sacramentally ordained a woman deacon in 2024. It is a practice which is still alive and ongoing.

In December 2025, the Vatican announced its stance on women deacons, under the pretense that it was a recent development that they were eager to share with their constituents. Unfortunately, this was a charade – below is a timeline of this deception:

The Commission on the Female Diaconate, chaired by Cardinal Petrocchi, had already voted against the possibility of allowing the sacramental ordination of women as deacons in its second session in July 2022!

With that session, they answered the very question they had been set up to answer, thereby fulfilling their mandate. This is indicated by the fact that after that vote, the commission did not hold any additional sessions for more than two years, suggesting it regarded its task as completed.

That only changed in October 2024 when, under pressure from the participants of the second session of the Synod on Synodality, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), publicly stated to the synod that Cardinal Petrocchi confirmed to him that his commission “will resume [work] in the coming months”.

However, Card. Fernandez then went on to admit that, based on the work of the Petrocchi commission (which took into account the work of the previous commission from 2016), “the dicastery judges that there is still no room for a positive decision by the Magisterium regarding the access of women to the diaconate”. This is an accidental public acknowledgement by the Vatican of the conclusion reached by the Petrocchi commission already in its second and hitherto final session of July 2022.

It is scandalous that Card. Fernandez did not explain that the dicastery’s judgment was in fact based on the conclusion the papal commission had reached more than two years earlier, and that such a conclusion had been kept secret for more than two years even from participants to the synod on synodality during 2023 and 2024, despite an explicit request from the synod to see the relevant findings and documentation of the Petrocchi commission.

The Vatican needs to be held accountable for pretending to examine a topic close to the hearts of the majority of Catholics.

Below is a timeline of what happened, piecing together the scant information made public so far by Catholic Church officials:

8 April 2020: Pope Francis established a second study commission on the diaconate of women, presided by Card. Petrocchi (the Petrocchi commission).[2]

13-18 September 2021: First “session” of the commission meets, during which it voted as follows in favour of the following affirmations:

– the diaconate of women found in church history “was not understood as the simple female equivalent of the male diaconate and does not appear to have had a sacramental character” (7-0 in favour);

– “there are question marks concerning the compatibility of women’s diaconal ordination with the Catholic doctrine about the ordained ministry” (10-0 in favour).[3]

11-16 July 2022: Second session of the commission meets, where it voted by a 7-1 majority to

– “exclude the possibility of […] admitting women to the diaconate understood as a degree of the sacrament of Holy Orders. In light of Sacred Scripture, Tradition, and the ecclesiastical Magisterium, this evaluation is robust, although as of today it does not allow to pass a definitive judgment, as in the case of priestly ordination”.

Therefore, the commission had already reached its final conclusion by 16 July 2022. That the commission members themselves regarded that to be the case is suggested by the fact that no additional “sessions” took place, until the third and final session in February 2025, after the commission was hastily “reactivated” around October 2024 (according to Card. Fernandez, see below), following pressure by the second session of the Synod on Synodality taking place that month.

That by the July 2022 session the commission had already given its final negative verdict on the substantive issue at stake is further demonstrated by the fact that the third and final February 2025 session — coming more than two and a half years after their decisive July 2022 session — no longer voted on whether women can be admitted to the diaconate, but only on one justification for their exclusion (the “masculinity” of Christ), and on the importance of examining the possibility of other “instituted ministries” which women could carry out.[4]

To reiterate: Pope Francis’ second study commission had already finalised its votes on the substantive issue by July 2022, voting to exclude women from the sacramental diaconate. Nothing of that was revealed to Catholics, and it would remain a secret for more than two years – including to all members of the synod on synodality – until 4 December 2025.

July 2022 – October 2024: the Petrocchi commission remained dormant, without publicly revealing it had already formally voted to exclude women from the sacramental diaconate.

Again, no mention of that was made to the participants of the forthcoming synod on synodality, who were going to debate the issue in October 2023 and October 2024.

28 October 2023: the official summary report of the first session of the Synod on Synodality (Oct. 2023) formally asked that “[i]f possible, the results of this research” by the earlier papal study commissions on that topic “should be presented to the next Session of the Assembly” in October 2024 (https://www.synod.va/content/dam/synod/assembly/synthesis/english/2023.10.28-ENG-Synthesis-Report.pdf, section 9, par. N).

16 February 2024: Pope Francis removes the discussion of women deacons from the synod, and gives it instead to one of ten “study groups” tasked to examine controversial issues which had emerged during the synod’s debate.[5]

This so-called Study Group 5 (SG5) was “entrusted the task to continue ‘Theological and pastoral research on the access of women to the diaconate […], benefiting from consideration of the results of the commissions specially established by the Holy Father’”, referring in turn to the October 2023 Synthesis Report of the synod, section 9n, mentioned above. Like all other study groups, SG5 was supposed to carry out its research “in a synodal way” – something they clearly did not do.

20 March 2024: Pope Francis states in an interview that women cannot be sacramentally ordained to the diaconate. A strange utterance if one believed that when he said it, the Petrocchi commission was still debating the issue; but not so strange if that commission had ruled the same almost two years earlier.

9 July 2024: the membership of all study groups was officially revealed by the Vatican, apart from the one of Study Group 5. The task of the latter is said instead to “have been entrusted to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith”.[6]

All Study Groups had been asked to provide the second session of the synod on Synodality, taking place during October 2024, with an interim report on their work so far.

1 October 2024: Card. Fernandez provided the interim report on behalf of the SG5 (which, when pressed publicly a few weeks later, he confirmed did not exist: instead, its remit had been taken over by the DDF – i.e. his own Vatican officials and not a specially selected group of experts -, see below). You can find the written text of his remarks as provided to journalists, and the slightly different transcript of the speech as delivered here: https://www.diffchecker.com/7tg2qIrB/. In that interim report, he made two points:

“On the horizon [of the work of SG5] is the issue of women’s access to the diaconate, which also takes into account the work done by the two commissions established, whose most useful conclusions will be made known in the document.”

Thus, Card. Fernandez confirmed the SG5 was dealing with the issue of women deacons.

“Based on the analysis conducted so far, which also takes into account the work done by the two commissions established by Pope Francis on the female diaconate, the dicastery judges that there is still no room for a positive decision by the Magisterium regarding the access of women to the diaconate.”

In short: on 1 October 2024 Card. Fernandez still affirmed that SG5 was dealing with the topic of women deacons, and that it had been doing so also by taking into account the work done by the two earlier papal commissions. This confirms by far the most likely situation, namely that the Card. Fernandez himself and the DDF would have been aware of the 2021 and 2022 votes by the Petrocchi commission that excluded, for now, the possibility of a sacramental diaconate for women.

18 October 2024: Card. Fernandez, as the coordinator of SG5, fails to attend a special meeting formally requested by synod participants to be able to provide their feedback on the remit of SG5, including women deacons, one of the synod’s most closely watched issues for which SG5 and Card. Fernandez were responsible.

21 October 2024: Card. Fernandez formally apologises for missing that meeting, and states:

the Holy Father has expressed that in this moment, the matter of the female diaconate is not ripe and has asked that we do not dwell on this possibility at the moment. The study commission on the theme has reached partial conclusions, which we will publish at the right moment, but it will continue to work.[7]

Card. Fernandez thereby confirmed knowledge of the votes of the Petrocchi commission. He also implicitly defended the decision to keep them secret for more than two years, by stating they will only be published “when the time is right”. He then added:

Despite what has been said, for those who are convinced that the question of the female diaconate must be explored, the Holy Father has confirmed to me that the Commission presided over by Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi will continue to be active. The members of the Synod who wish – either individually or as groups – may send their considerations, proposals, articles or concerns on the matter to the Commission. Cardinal Petrocchi has confirmed that the work will resume in the coming months and that they will analyse the material that has arrived.[8]

The reference to the need to check the status of the Petrocchi commission with Pope Francis, and the detail that “Cardinal Petrocchi has confirmed that the work will resume in the coming months”, indicates that that dormant commission had only just been re-activated in order to receive the material from those who, “despite what has been said” (i.e. that the Pope did not want it discussed), were still “convinced that the question of the female diaconate must be explored”. It points to a hasty re-activation of a hitherto dormant commission which had already answered negatively the crucial question it had been set up for – can women be sacramentally ordained to the diaconate? – in July 2022.

In the same communiqué, Card. Fernandez also agreed to come back on 24 October 2024 to provide more clarity to the synod members as to the composition and work of SG5.

24 October 2024: Card. Fernandez was publicly asked by the Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, S.J., dean of the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, whether his comments on October 2 meant that

“in making that judgment [that ‘there is still no room for a positive decision by the Magisterium regarding the access of women to the diaconate’], you must have seen evidence, heard testimonies. And so, I am asking myself, what evidence, what testimony, what material elements have been available to the dicastery? And do these include outcomes of the two study commissions, which maybe you are privy to?”.

Card. Fernandez did not reply to those specific questions (https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/11/20/transcript-study-group-5-cardinal-fernandez-249325/); however, at some point in his reply, he said:

He [Pope Francis] certainly has received some material from the [previous study] commissions [on women deacons], the commissions that have been there and that continue. And the conclusions we will then make public, perhaps by giving some votes, some details. But the conclusions are more or less these: That things are not absolutely clear, that they cannot now conclude, more or less that is the partial conclusion.

But we continue to work. And if a material arrives that presents some new things, that will help us to move forward on this topic.

But, even if I have not studied this material of the two commissions, I have seen something. With the little time I had, I have seen something of this material. There are, on the one hand, the historical studies. And there is a discussion. There are those who affirm that, in certain cases, they [women] have been ordained. There is another opinion of historians, equally respectable, that says that it was not really an ordination, that it was a ceremony of blessing, etc. And among the historians, there are these different opinions.

In other words, Card. Fernandez stated 1. that the SG5 might make public some “votes” of the study commissions (thus implying that SG5 had had vision of those votes, and so they would have known that the Petrocchi commission had already excluded women deacons), 2. that the conclusions of the previous study commissions were that “That things are not absolutely clear, that they cannot now conclude”, and that 3. “we continue to work”.

Given the various statements by Card. Fernandez himself during October 2024, is it remotely possible that at the time he made those statements he had not been aware of the 2021 and 2022 votes of the Petrocchi commission against women deacons? Given his position as head of the DDF, there is no possibility that he could have been unaware of this result.

And if he was indeed aware of them – as it is most likely based on his own words – then he was misleading the synod members: The final July 2022 vote by the Petrocchi commission was unambiguously in favour of excluding women from the diaconate; its mitigating statement that “In light of Sacred Scripture, Tradition, and the ecclesiastical Magisterium, this assessment is robust, although as of today it does not allow to pass a definitive judgment, as in the case of priestly ordination” cannot be described as meaning that whether women can be admitted to the diaconate is “not absolutely clear” and so could not be “concluded” (i.e. affirmed).

In fact, the core affirmation or finding of the “synthesis” of the final report of the Petrocchi commission (a final report which itself is to this day still unpublished) is precisely the crucial vote during the July 2022 session, which

“exclude[s] the possibility of […] admitting women to the diaconate understood as a degree of the sacrament of Holy Orders. In light of Sacred Scripture, Tradition, and the ecclesiastical Magisterium, this evaluation is robust, although as of today it does not allow to pass a definitive judgment, as in the case of priestly ordination”.

As noted earlier, Card. Fernandez himself had summarised it on 2 October 2024 as follows:

“Based on the analysis conducted so far, which also takes into account the work done by the two commissions established by Pope Francis on the female diaconate, the dicastery judges that there is still no room for a positive decision by the Magisterium regarding the access of women to the diaconate.”

Card. Fernandez’s affirmation mere days later, on 24 Oct 2024, that the commission had concluded “That things are not absolutely clear, that they cannot now conclude” on that topic, was therefore misleading.

Card. Fernandez then suggested again that the issue had been given back to a newly reactivated Petrocchi commission: “As I said, on the diaconate there is still in force the commission of Cardinal [Giuseppe] Petrocchi, who has already summoned the members for the next few months, with the idea of receiving materials and opinions and suggestions to resume the work of the commission with more force, with more energy and decision, listening to what can come from the synod and from the world.”

As we will see, the “reactivated” Petrocchi commission will treat dismissively those new submissions, coming as they were two and a half years after its conclusion that women should not be admitted to the sacramental diaconate (see https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2025/12/04/0950/01725.html).

During the same Q&A Card. Fernandez also made the following statements:

– He admitted that the Study Group 5 did not exist: its task had been secretly taken up by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, without telling anybody, until he was publicly asked by the participants to the synod on synodality (as he put it, it was decided that instead of establishing Study Group 5, the topic of women in the church “remained up to the dicastery” (https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/11/20/transcript-study-group-5-cardinal-fernandez-249325/).

– Contrary to what he had suggested just a few weeks before, during his brief interim report to the synod on October 2 (see the text here: https://www.diffchecker.com/7tg2qIrB/), he now insisted “the fundamental purpose of this ‘group,’ [Study Group 5, i.e. the DDF] […] is the theme of the role of women in the church. It’s not the diaconate.”

– “on the diaconate there is still in force the commission of Cardinal [Giuseppe] Petrocchi”

– “If we [i.e. Study Group 5/the DDF] get something on the diaconate, we can read it […] And then we’ll send it to the commission”.

Early February 2025: The Petrocchi study commission secretly voted in favour of justifying the exclusion of women from the diaconate (which they had already approved in 2022) by reference to the “masculinity” of Christ, and Card Fernandez and the DDF (under the direct supervision of direct and knowledge of Pope Francis) were surely informed of it. Nothing was said in public, the show had to go on.

7 February 2025: The Petrocchi commission finalises the “Documento finale della Commissione sul Diaconato alle donne”, presumably the full report of the commission, of which the “Synthesis” (or summary) was publicly revealed on 4 December 2025. Again, nothing was said publicly by anyone.

In particular, the press reported extensively on the shifting deadline by which “Study Group 5”— in reality, the DDF — was supposed to provide the Pope with its opinion on women deacons: first by end of June 2025, and then by end of December 2025.

Never did Card. Fernandez take the opportunity to clarify that the DDF had volleyed that hot potato back to the Petrocchi commission, which in turn had already concluded its voting in February 2025.

17 November 2025: Msgr. Armando Matteo (secretary for the DDF) restated that the final report of SG5 (aka DDF) will NOT address the issue of women deacons, and will leave it instead entirely to the Petrocchi commission, to which it had sent all material they have received pertaining to it, without having done anything with it.[9]

Again, Msgr. Matteo did not mention that the Petrocchi commission had already decided negatively in July 2022, and had written up that (by then two and a half year-old) decision on a final report dated 7 February 2025.

4 December 2025: the big reveal about the No from the Petrocchi commission.

In summary: the first session of the Synod on Synodality formally asked to be given the results of the papal commission on the diaconate by October 2024 at the latest.

It did not know that the Petrocchi commission had already voted to exclude the ordination of women to the sacramental diaconate in July 2022 and had been dormant since.

In February 2024 the SG5/DDF was tasked by Pope Francis to look at that issue again, and it was explicitly told to make use of the reports of previous papal study commissions.

In October 2024 Card. Fernandez told the synod that SG5 did not exist, as its work was carried out by the DDF, but that at the same time the DDF had decided to give the topic of women deacons back to the Petrocchi commission, which had now been “reactivated”.

He did not reveal, although he certainly knew, that the commission had overwhelmingly and definitely voted against women deacons more than two years before (no more votes on that subject were to be taken in its final session in February 2025); and instead he encouraged people to send to the commission pertinent material. That omission misled the synod participants in thinking the issue was still being discussed.

In early February 2025, the Petrocchi commission gathered for a final session that would have entailed going through 22 submissions from synod participants; by 7 February 2025 they had passed the Final Report incorporating the crucial July 2022 vote.

The entire process — particularly the selection of all members of the study commission and study group — was conducted without transparency. This lack of openness appears intended to ensure the appointment of compliant yes-men (and, it must be said, yes-women), contrary to the synod’s request that all source material (including two earlier commission reports) be made public. The approach seemed designed to guarantee that the final outcome would align with predetermined expectations.

Notes

[1] See the interview at https://www.osvnews.com/a-vatican-commission-recently-said-no-to-women-deacons-two-members-of-the-commission-explain-why/.

[2] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/44137/pope-francis-establishes-new-commission-to-study-women-deacons

[3] As revealed in the “Sintesi della Commissione di Studio sul Diaconato Femminile”, sent to Pope Leo on 18 September 2025, and published by the Vatican on 4 December 2025, see https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2025/12/04/0950/01725.html.

[4] “Sintesi della Commissione di Studio sul Diaconato Femminile”, https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2025/12/04/0950/01725.html.

[5] https://www.vaticannews.va/it/papa/news/2024-02/papa-chirografo-gruppi-studio-temi-sinodo-date-sinodalita.html.

[6] https://press.vatican.va/content/dam/salastampa/it/fuori-bollettino/pdf/ELENCO_10_GRUPPI.pdf

[7] https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/info/2024/10/21/241021c.html; in the Italian original here: https://www.vaticannews.va/it/vaticano/news/2024-10/cardinale-fernandez-comunicazione-sinodo-diaconato-femminile.html.

[8] https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/info/2024/10/21/241021c.html

[9] https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-study-groups-cite-womens-diaconate-among-priorities-new-synod-reports.

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In Memory of Pope Francis – A Catholic Academic Analysis

Immediate release: Wednesday, 23rd April 2025

The Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research is saddened by the death of Pope Francis and extends condolences to our academic colleagues both within the Vatican and those in Catholic universities throughout the world. Pope Francis changed the culture of the official Catholic Church from one of silencing and punishment to a place where, for the first time, theologians and academics could openly question contested teachings.

Pope Francis significantly contributed to reform by advocating for more lay participation in church decision-making and encouraging debate on doctrinal topics. He insisted the church should listen to all its members and often strongly criticized “clericalism,” a mindset where the clergy sees itself as above ordinary Catholics and disregards any obligation to be accountable to the laity. Francis made several concrete steps to ensure lasting change: in 2018, he amended a Canon Law decree concerning how to hold synods (church gatherings called and controlled by the hierarchy), mandating that they be preceded by a consultation of laypeople (Apostolic constitution Episcopalis communio, par. 7, 2018). However, hardly any guidelines have been given for such a consultation, leaving every bishop with ample discretion as to how to carry it out.

In 2022, Pope Francis passed a second piece of legislation, which allowed laypeople (including women) to head most Vatican departments (Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium, par. 10 and Art. 15, 2022). Francis often insisted that more women should be appointed to positions of responsibility that do not require ordination.

But regarding more “doctrinal” issues, Pope Francis mostly succeeded only in mellowing the tone rather than altering canon law. Almost no official teaching was changed under his leadership.

The most glaring omission in Francis’s record of challenging the status quo on controversial topics was the question of women’s ministry. Francis was clearly struck by the gender imbalance he witnessed within the Vatican and in the latter years of his papacy added a small number of women to select positions of influence. But he failed to act on what would have been a basic step towards global equality within the Church: recognising and reinstating women as deacons. In fact, on several occasions he admitted that he was personally opposed to women in ordained ministry.

Pope Francis made positive statements on the recognition of same-sex civil unions and offered a more realistic approach to contraception. But in these areas, again, no concrete steps were taken to adjust the official teaching that condemns both. On the Church’s position on divorced and remarried Catholics, Francis cautiously suggested they could, in certain circumstances, receive communion, but the official ban and condemnation of their status remains in place. Francis also showed no inclination to revise the church’s position on mandatory celibacy for priests.

In all those cases, Pope Francis repeatedly decided not to go beyond emphasising mercy rather than abrogating those papal prohibitions against “artificial” contraceptives, communion for divorced and remarried people, same-sex relationships, and mandatory celibacy. This, despite polls showing that most Catholics worldwide would have supported such a repeal.

That official teachings on those and other issues were unrepresentative of, and unsupported by, the People of God was likely what triggered Pope Francis’ novel yet long overdue emphasis on finally listening to the laity, i.e. 99.9% of Catholics worldwide. From now on we can expect official teachings to become more responsive, and faster, to the beliefs and practices of ordinary Catholics, with the pressure for change increasing the greater their divergence from popular opinion. Such a procedural development will likely become one of Pope Francis’ lasting legacies.

Contact:

Miriam Duignan (Executive Director): T +44 7970 926910 E miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com

Dr. Luca Badini Confalonieri (Academic Director): T: + 44 7446 283699 E luca.badini@wijngaardsinstitute.com

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Your Eminence,

The Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research and seven other organisations for church reform are happy to provide you with reports concerning women in ordained ministry and governance in the Church (including the selection of bishops), as contributions to three of the study groups established by Pope Francis.

Our founder, Rev. Dr. Johannes Wijngaards (1935 – 2025) was a Dutch priest and former Vicar General of the Mill Hill Missionary order. He was a contemporary of many of your brother Cardinals and Bishops, having obtained his Licentiate of Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and a Doctorate of Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in the early 1960s. He founded our Institute in service of the Catholic world, including by addressing errors and omissions in Catholic teaching and practice. In this spirit, we hope that Rev. Dr. Wijngaards’ life work will prove useful to the members of the three study groups mentioned below.

The below listed international reform networks join with the members of the Wijngaards Research Institute for Catholic Research to submit to you:

1. Attention of Study Group #9: The “Proposed Constitution for the Catholic Church”.

The goal of the constitution is to offer Study Group 9 one possible way to integrate into a legal framework that is coherent, pragmatic, as well as compatible with biblical studies, theological research, and ecumenical dialogues, proposals for the structural reform of the Catholic Church which have been advanced regularly, especially during the diocesan grassroots consultations for Phase 1 of the Synod on Synodality.

The constitution builds on those grassroots consultations, of which it provides one possible expression through an interdisciplinary collaboration between bible scholars, church historians, theologians, canon lawyers, and scholars from other relevant disciplines. The resulting final draft of the constitution has been endorsed by 67 academics from 17 countries, from Brazil to the Philippines.

The constitution also responds to the formal recommendation by the “Synodale Weg” (Synodal Way) of the Catholic Church in Germany that “the discussion on a Lex ecclesiae fundamentalis, and its norms which are fundamental for the legal system of the entire Church, […] be rekindled and brought to a positive conclusion” (for the reference, please see the Overview document linked below).

Two documents for Study Group #9:

• • • Text of the Constitution itself at https://www.wijngaardsinstitute.com/costituzione-chiesa-cattolica/ (downloadable as PDF in Italian, English, Spanish, German, and French);
    • Accompanying document, which includes both a Cover Letter for Study Group 9, and an Overview outlining the constitution’s background, precedents, key proposals, and main documentary sources (in canon law – both Catholic and of other Christian Churches – as well as in international/human rights law), available as a PDF at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g8littF7g6L0YIOvXJvWuv9yiAv80jbF/view?usp=sharing.

2. Attention of Study Group #5: Research Documents on Women Deacons.

Our research has brought together what is arguably the largest collection of historical evidence and other material concerning women deacons for most of church history.

Many documents confirm that these ordinations took place by means of a rite substantially identical to the one for the ordination of their male counterparts: that is, their ordinations were by the imposition of the bishop’s hands and took place in the sanctuary, in front of the altar and during the Eucharistic Liturgy immediately after the Anaphora, just like for the ordination of male deacons, presbyters, and bishops. Several Popes authorised Sacramentaries containing ordination prayers for women deacons.

Document for Study Group #5: “A Documented Appeal to Request the Re-instatement of the Ordained Diaconate for Women”, available in Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, and English at https://www.wijngaardsinstitute.com/diaconato-per-le-donne/. 

3. Attention of Study Group #7: “Proposal for the Reintroduction of Episcopal Elections”.

This proposal is inspired by the pioneering yet concrete procedure advanced by Blessed Antonio Rosmini, as well as by the constitution of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, and by the practice of other Christian Churches, such as the Episcopal Church (United States).

Two documents for Study Group #7:

• • • “Proposal for the Reintroduction of Episcopal Elections”, available at https://www.wijngaardsinstitute.com/proposal-for-reintroducing-democratic-elections-of-bishops-by-the-local-church/ (in English);
    • Luca Badini Confalonieri, “The Election of Bishops by Clergy and People: Antonio Rosmini’s Neglected Solution.” Theological Studies 73, no. 1 (2012): 82–114, available at https://theologicalstudies.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/4-Confalonieri-Election-of-Bishops.pdf.

We would be grateful if you could forward the documents to the three Study Groups above mentioned, and we trust they will prove to be helpful aids to their synodal study and discussions.

We take this occasion to express our consideration and esteem in Christ.

Luca Badini Confalonieri

On behalf of WICR, together with the leadership of the following seven organisations:

• Australasian Catholic Coalition for Church Reform
• We Are Church International
• Spirit Unbounded
• International Church Reform Network
• Catholic Church Reform International
• Be the Change Aotearoa – New Zealand
• Root & Branch Synod

Testo in italiano:

Eminenza,

Oggetto: Contributi per tre Gruppi di Studio del sinodo, su riforme strutturali della Chiesa Cattolica e sull’accesso delle donne al diaconato ordinato, offerti da otto organizzazioni coordinate dal Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research

Il Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research e altre sette organizzazioni per la riforma della chiesa cattolica (in calce) sono lieti di fornirLe contributi riguardanti le donne nel ministero ordinato, e il governo della Chiesa (inclusa la selezione dei vescovi) – come contributi al lavoro di tre dei Gruppi di Studio istituiti da Papa Francesco.

Il fondatore del Wijngaards Institute, il rev. dr. Johannes Wijngaards (1935 – 2025), è stato sacerdote, teologo, ed ex vicario generale dell’ordine missionario di Mill Hill. Fu contemporaneo di molti dei vostri fratelli cardinali e vescovi, avendo conseguito la licenza in Sacra Scrittura presso il Pontificio Istituto Biblico e il dottorato in Teologia presso la Pontificia Università Gregoriana all’inizio degli anni Sessanta. Ha fondato il nostro Istituto al servizio del mondo cattolico, incluso attraverso l’esame critico di errori e omissioni nell’insegnamento e nella pratica cattolica. In tale spirito, ci auspichiamo che il lavoro di una vita del Rev. Dr. Wijngaards possa tornare utile ai membri dei tre gruppi di studio di cui sotto.

Le sette organizzazioni elencate in calce si uniscono ai membri del Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research per sottoporLe i seguenti contributi:

1. All’attenzione del Gruppo di Studio #9: La “Proposta di Costituzione per la Chiesa Cattolica”.

L’obiettivo della costituzione è quello di offrire al Gruppo di Studio 9 una maniera possibile di integrare in un quadro giuridico che sia coerente, pragmatico e compatibile con gli studi biblici, la ricerca teologica e i dialoghi ecumenici, molte delle riforme strutturali che sono state avanzate frequentemente, e specialmente durante le consultazioni diocesane di base delle Chiese particolari di tutto il mondo, nell’ambito della Fase 1 del Sinodo sulla sinodalità.

    La Costituzione attinge a tale consultazione di base, e ne offre una possibile espressione attraverso una collaborazione interdisciplinare tra biblisti, storici della Chiesa, teologi, giuristi canonici e studiosi di altre discipline rilevanti. La bozza finale che ne è risultata è stata sottoscritta da 67 accademici provenienti da 17 Paesi, dal Brasile alle Filippine.

    La costituzione risponde anche alla raccomandazione formale del “Synodale Weg” (o “cammino sinodale”) della Chiesa cattolica in Germania, e cioè che “la discussione su una Lex ecclesiae fundamentalis, e sulle sue norme che sono fondamentali per il sistema giuridico dell’intera Chiesa, […] sia riaccesa e portata a una conclusione positiva” (per il riferimento, si veda il documento Overview/Panoramica linkato qui sotto).

I due documenti per il Gruppo di studio n. 9 sono:

• • • Il testo della Costituzione stessa all’indirizzo https://www.wijngaardsinstitute.com/costituzione-chiesa-cattolica/ (scaricabile in PDF in italiano, inglese, spagnolo, tedesco e francese);
    • Documento di accompagnamento, che include sia una Lettera di presentazione per il Gruppo di studio 9, sia una panoramica che delinea il contesto della Costituzione, i precedenti, le proposte chiave e le principali fonti documentarie (nel diritto canonico – sia cattolico che di altre Chiese cristiane – e nel diritto internazionale/diritti umani), disponibili in formato PDF all’indirizzo https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g8littF7g6L0YIOvXJvWuv9yiAv80jbF/view?usp=sharing.

2. All’attenzione del Gruppo di studio n. 5: Documenti di ricerca sulle donne diacono.

La nostra ricerca ha riunito quella che è probabilmente la più grande raccolta di testimonianze storiche e di altro materiale riguardante le donne diacono nella storia della Chiesa.

    Alcuni documenti confermano che nella tradizione bizantina queste ordinazioni avvenivano con un rito sostanzialmente identico a quello dell’ordinazione dei loro omologhi maschili: cioè, le loro ordinazioni avvenivano con l’imposizione delle mani del vescovo e si svolgevano nel santuario, davanti all’altare e durante la liturgia eucaristica subito dopo l’anafora, proprio come per l’ordinazione di diaconi, presbiteri e vescovi maschi. Diversi Papi hanno autorizzato Sacramentari contenenti preghiere di ordinazione per le donne diacono.

Il documento per il Gruppo di studio n. 5 è: “Appello documentato per chiedere la reintroduzione del diaconato femminile”, disponibile in italiano, spagnolo, francese, olandese, tedesco e inglese su https://www.wijngaardsinstitute.com/diaconato-per-le-donne/.

3. All’attenzione del Gruppo di studio n. 7: “Proposta per la reintroduzione delle elezioni episcopali”.

Questa proposta si ispira anzitutto alla procedura pionieristica ma concreta suggerita dal Beato Antonio Rosmini, ma anche alla Costituzione (e prassi) della Chiesa ortodossa di Cipro e alla prassi di altre Chiese cristiane, come la Chiesa episcopale (Stati Uniti).

I due documenti per il Gruppo di studio n. 7 sono:

• • • “Proposta per la reintroduzione delle elezioni episcopali”, disponibile su https://www.wijngaardsinstitute.com/proposal-for-reintroducing-democratic-elections-of-bishops-by-the-local-church/ (in inglese);
    • Luca Badini Confalonieri, “The Election of Bishops by Clergy and People: Antonio Rosmini’s Neglected Solution”, Theological Studies 73, n. 1 (2012): 82-114, disponibile su https://theologicalstudies.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/4-Confalonieri-Election-of-Bishops.pdf.

Eminenza, Le saremmo grati se poteste inoltrare tali documenti ai tre Gruppi di studio sopra menzionati: confidiamo che si rivelino un utile ausilio per il loro importante lavoro.

Cogliamo l’occasione per esprimerLe la nostra considerazione e stima in Cristo.

Luca Badini Confalonieri,

Direttore di ricerca

Wijngaards institute for Catholic Research,

insieme alla leadership delle seguenti sette organizzazioni:

 Australian Catholic Coalition for Church Reform

• We Are Church International
• Spirit Unbounded
• International Church Reform Network
• Catholic Church Reform International
• Be the change Aotearoa – Nuova Zelanda
• Root & Branch Synod

The post Lay Leadership Submits Church Governance and Women Deacon Reports to Aid Vatican Study Groups appeared first on Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research.

Death of our founder, John Wijngaards (30 September 1935 – 2 January 2025)

Immediate release: Monday, 6th January 2025

It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research announces the death of our founder, John Wijngaards, on 2nd January 2025. For nearly fifty years, John — whom many knew as ‘Hans’ — was a prominent supporter of the ordination of women in the Catholic Church. In 1998, he took a very public stand for this cause, resigning from the Catholic priesthood in protest of Pope John Paul II’s banning of women priests — as well as any discussion of the issue.

Born on 30th September 1935 in Surabaya, Indonesia, to Dutch parents, Wijngaards and his family endured profound hardships during World War II. His father, who was a high school teacher, was drafted into the Dutch army to fight against the Japanese and was forced to work on the infamous Thai-Burma railway line in Thailand as a prisoner of war. At the same time, Wijngaards, his mother, and three of his brothers spent four years in Japanese war encampments in Java. After the war, he and his entire family were repatriated to the Netherlands where they faced poverty and deprivation.

Wijngaards studied at the major seminaries of Roosendaal in the Netherlands and Mill Hill in the United Kingdom. He joined the Mill Hill Missionary Society in 1958 and was ordained a priest in 1959. He was then sent to Rome for further study, where he obtained the Licentiate of Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and a Doctorate of Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

Wijngaards served as a Mill Hill Missionary in India as resident professor at St John’s College in Hyderabad for fourteen years, then for many years on lecture tours throughout India and Pakistan. After being elected Vicar General of the Mill Hill Missionaries in 1976, a post he held for six years, he helped build up missionary projects across five continents. From 1982-2009 he directed Housetop, an international centre of adult faith formation. During that time, he was also Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Missionary Institute London which was affiliated with Louvain Catholic University and Middlesex University.

Wijngaards was at heart a scholar and teacher with a deep thirst for justice. Over the past three decades, he continued to expand his engagement with church teachings that he believed needed reform. In 2005, he founded the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, an independent theological think tank that produced ground-breaking academic studies of taboo topics such as contraception, same-sex relationships, and authority in the church. He recruited some of the most distinguished scholars from around the world to develop these reports with objective, academic rigour.

Wijngaards was a prolific writer, authoring over 350 articles, 12 educational websites, and 12 pamphlets. He also wrote 35 books over the course of his lifetime, and his website womenpriests.org, founded in 1999, is the largest online archive of material in support of the ordination of women — receiving a million unique readers in one year alone. His final book, Why Christ Rejects All Prejudice Against Women (Acadian House) published just weeks ago on 18 December, is fittingly focused on the issue that so grounded his prophetic ministry.

Wijngaards was predeceased by his wife, Jackie Clackson, whom he married in a simple Church ceremony in the Netherlands in April 2000. Clackson, a former nun, had worked with Wijngaards in India and co-founded the Housetop Centre for Adult Faith Formation with him. ‘Living in the same house and shouldering joint responsibility for some many diverse apostolic projects had brought us very close’, Wijngaards wrote on his autobiographical website. When Rome released him from the obligation of celibacy in February 2000, ‘the result was inevitable’, Wijngaards said, ‘we decided to get married’.

Reflecting on his own life on his website, Wijngaards summed up this way: ‘I have lived a life full of rich and colourful experiences. I dedicated my energy to worthwhile causes. My aim has been to open new doors and widen horizons for people worldwide. I hope that my story will inspire others and encourage them to do the same’.

Reflecting on Wijngaards’ quest for justice and liberation in the Catholic Church, Dr Luca Badini Confalonieri, Director of Research at the Wijngaards Institute, said:

“Hans believed strongly in the dignity of each and every human being. He once told us that we are endowed by God with a brain and a conscience, and we have a God-given right to make use of them. He saw the extent to which prejudices and blind adherence to traditions and authority could harm many people. He believed that overcoming this was the liberating purpose of Christianity”.

Miriam Duignan, Executive Director of the Wijngaards Institute, said:

“Ultimately Hans retained his priestly devotion to the church and his Catholic faith, because he believed in its power to transform and help people. Hans believed the key to challenge and change harmful teachings was to provide qualified, constructive, academic criticism that shows how a more inclusive understanding of Catholicism is possible and necessary and to do so using arguments which are convincing to leaders of the Catholic Church. This is the legacy he has left in the world and the mission the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Institute will continue long into the future”.

Contact:

Miriam Duignan (Executive Director): T +44 7970 926910 E miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com

Dr. Luca Badini Confalonieri (Academic Director): T: + 44 7446 283699 E luca.badini@wijngaardsinstitute.com

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Catholic leaders demand transparency from Vatican office conducting secretive “study of women”

Immediate release: Monday, July 29th 2024

(The below is a copy of the letter sent to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith)

Dear Monsignor Armando Matteo,

We are writing as leaders of worldwide associations of Catholics deeply committed to the implementation of synodality throughout the Catholic Church, to ask for the publication of the criteria and procedure of selection, as well as the names of the members, of Study Group 5 on “Some theological and canonical issues around specific ministerial forms”.

At the end of the Press Conference of 09/07/2024 which presented the Instrumentum laboris for the October 2024 session of the Synod on Synodality, the names were published of the members of fourteen of the fifteen study groups which will investigate some of the issues which emerged during the October 2023 Synod gathering.

The only study group whose names were not and have not so far been published is the above mentioned Study Group 5 which deals, among other things, with the possibility of restoring the diaconate for women.

Instead, the press release specified that that study group has been entrusted entirely to the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), “according to the procedures established in its own Rules of Procedure with a view to the publication of an appropriate document”.

What that statement omits is that those Rules of Procedure -presumably the Regolamento proprio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (Regolamento proprio) dated October 1995 – have never been published: they are to this day still secret.

Both past experience and what we know from other published canonical rules pertaining to the DDF, do not bode well for transparency. And since it has been deemed necessary to examine the question of women’s inclusion in such an environment of secrecy, we believe that this is a breach of your obligations to Catholic constituents who have the right to know why women continue to be excluded and deserve to have full disclosure of the discussions taking place.

The publicly accessible Rules of Procedure of the DDF specifically for doctrinal examinations have long been criticised for their disregard of the fundamental right to, and basic requirements of, a fair trial as set out in international law (UDHR Arts. 8-11, complemented by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR, 1966] Art. 14).

Among the infringements most relevant to present purposes are the fact that proceedings of all doctrinal examinations are to be closed to the public (in breach of UDHR Art. 10-11 which mandates proceedings to be public) and, more crucially still, there is no requirement that either the prosecution or any external expert be independent from the judges: their selection is left entirely at the discretion of members of the DDF. It appears that the same procedure is now being applied to Study Group 5, with the DDF given full discretion to hand-pick its members in secrecy, without making them public.

Similarly, the past record of the DDF does not inspire confidence. Since 2016, the DDF has hand-picked and overseen three successive study groups on the subject of women deacons: every time, their members were made public, although – crucially – they were chosen entirely by and at the discretion of the DDF, without providing any rationale or criteria for their selection, and their reports have been kept secret.

To this day, the findings, arguments and reasoning of those three commissions have not been made public. Again, it is not superfluous to recall that the same happened for two earlier study commissions on women deacons overseen by the then Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 1973 and 1992–97. In short, of the six such pontifical study commissions on women deacons since 1973, only one has published its findings.

To sum up: the recently published Instrumentum laboris states in its introduction that “These study groups, made up of pastors and experts from all continents, use a synodal working method” (emphasis added).

However, the DDF is still keeping secret:

1. the selection procedure (including the selection criteria) of the members,
2. the names of the members themselves, and
3. the final reports or, if no agreed statement was reached, the various contributions informing the work of the previous commissions,

This is deeply disrespectful to the People of God and makes a mockery of synodality. According to the Instrumentum laboris 2 (76), “If the synodal Church wants to be welcoming, then accountability and transparency must be at the core of its action at all levels, not only at the level of authority…those in positions of authority must be concerned with how the Church respects the dignity of the human person, for example, regarding the working conditions within its institutions.”

The issue of the role of women in ministry, including ordained ministry, is absolutely crucial to faithfulness to the gospel and the common good of the church, and its examination needs to be as rigorous and independent as possible.

Accordingly, we ask the DDF:

1. to publish as soon as possible the selection criteria and procedure, as well as the names of the members of Study Group 5;
2. to ensure that their findings are made public as soon as they are available; and
3. to start an open worldwide consultation of Catholics, including Catholic academic and professional associations, on reforming its own regulations for selecting external experts, with the goal of bringing it up to the best standards of openness and transparency adopted by civil society.

As a recent example, the “Proposed Constitution for the Catholic Church” coordinated by the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research and signed by more than sixty canon lawyers, bible scholars, church historians, and theologians, suggested that external expert advisors:

“shall be selected via an open and transparent peer-review process, whose criteria for selection must include relevant expertise, lack of conflict of interests, independence from church representatives and church leaders, and good standing within the relevant scientific community” (Art. 72).

Catholics have a fundamental right to education and to information, particularly concerning an issue, such as that of the role of women in ministry, of such import for the common good of the church. Such an inalienable right, based on their dignity, cannot be set aside with the excuse that to make public the debate on contentious theological issues could “scandalise” some of them.

We take this occasion to express our consideration and esteem in Christ.

Dr Luca Badini Confaloneri, Academic Director, Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research

Co-signatories:

Catholic Church Reform International

Catholic Women’s Council

Catholic Women’s Ordination

Root & Branch Community for Reform (UK and International)

Spirit Unbounded

We are Church International

Women’s Ordination Worldwide

Contact:

Miriam Duignan (Executive Director): T +44 7970 926910 E miriam.duignan@wijngaardsinstitute.com

Dr. Luca Badini Confalonieri (Academic Director): T: + 44 7446 283699 E luca.badini@wijngaardsinstitute.com

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Synodality: Noun. Walking together, but only when you are told to…

There are perplexing contradictions in Card. Mario Grech’s definition of “synodality”, which he repeated again at the European ecclesial assembly in February 2023 in Prague. It’s important to parse them because Card. Grech is the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, overseeing the current “Synod on Synodality”, and familiar with Pope Francis’ vision for the church.

1. On the one hand, he – in the wake of Pope Francis himself – has been emphasising that the church will have to be a church that listens to all its members, and that “The synodal process is entirely founded on the principle of [mutual] listening” (Card. Grech, speech “Continental Stage: A New Stage in the Synodal Process”, 06/02/2023).
2. On the other hand, both him and the Pope have defended the current practice, which is that at every level – diocesan, national, or international – synods can only be called when the bishops or the Pope say so and, what is more, that it is they alone who can set the agenda for discussion and determine its limits.

Some background: Pope Francis inherited this clericalist model from his predecessors. In 2018, he amended the canon law concerning precisely the procedure to be adopted by synods (Apostolic constitution Episcopalis communio).

A key change he introduced then was making the consultation of the laity a mandatory step for all future synods. While that’s undoubtedly a significant development, the bottom line is that Episcopalis communio leaves the clericalist procedure intact: only the bishops and the Pope can call a synod, control its agenda, and approve (or not) its decisions.

And so we get to the current “Synod on Synodality”, which Pope Francis has called in order to explore ways to make church governance more participatory. Its most ground-breaking feature so far has been precisely a worldwide, open consultation of all Catholics.

Much has been made of such a development, but it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that everything is still firmly channeled within the clericalist confines of current church law as laid down in Episcopalis communio. A vision which both Pope Francis and Card. Grech share, of course, so that we can be fairly certain that in their minds “Synodality” – whatever else it may mean – does not mean the clergy loses control either of the process or of the outcome.

This was made quite clear by Card. Grech in his above mentioned speech in Prague: first, he quoted approvingly Art. 5 of Episcopalis communio, which restricts to the Pope alone the power both to call a synod and to determine its agenda; then he reiterated the same idea by insisting that “non si dà consultazione se il Vescovo non convoca il Popolo di Dio a lui affidato” (“there is no consultation unless the bishop summons the People of God in his care”); and finally driving the point home by contending that that the “long list” of questions emerged from the worldwide consultation of Catholics and summarised in the so-called Document for the Continental Stage (DCS) “does not and cannot constitute the agenda of the synod”, because the latter had been already determined by the Pope, namely “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission”. As the cherry on the cake, he immediately added: “This is in no way an imposition which constraints freedom of speech, but an act of respect towards the Church and those who devoted themselves to deepen that theme”.

Card. Grech provided yet another confirmation that whatever emerges from the synodal consultation can be ignored if bishops or the Pope regard it as going beyond the agenda they alone can set. His insistence that doing so does not constraint freedom of speech is small consolation to all Catholics worldwide who contributed to the conversation in the hope of being heard: I suspect “You are free to speak, and we’re free to ignore you” is not the winning message the good Cardinal may think it is.[1]

In fact, in January 2023 Pope Francis defended yet again the view that only the bishops or the Pope can call a synod and set its agenda, by approving a Vatican letter firmly rebuking the crucial proposal by the German “Synodal Way”: namely, to establish a permanent and representative “synodal council” over the Catholic Church in Germany.

3. Thirdly – and in line with their idea that “mutual listening” must only occur within the boundaries set by the bishops and Pope alone – both Card. Grech and Pope Francis have also made it clear that they do not want the synod to make recommendations or take decisions on doctrinal issues (see Card. Grech’s quote above about the “long list” of issues emerged in the DCS), and that in any case the ultimate decision-makers will be the bishops.

So despite Card. Grech’s encouraging definition of synodality as “mutual listening” between bishops and laity, he’s been adamant that, at the end of the day, it is the bishops alone who will evaluate whether and how to take into account the voice of the laity.

In summary: according to Card. Grech, “synodality” means the laity can only listen to and debate when and what the Pope or bishops allow them to, and that in any case the laity can have no vote in the final decision-making process, which is still reserved to the bishops.

That’s still a firmly, unapologetically clericalist “synodal” process, and I fail to see how they plan to overcome it, and establish a truly synodal church of mutual listening. Action speak louder than words: if synodality is not to remain a fuzzy feel-good catchword, canon law must be amended to ensure that synodal bodies include representative laypeople and be deliberative, not merely consultative.

In any case, the bottom line is that despite Card. Grech insisting that the “long list” of issues summarised by the DCS will not set the agenda of the October synod of bishops in Rome, I very much suspect it will. To do otherwise would reveal “synodality” to be a mere PR exercise, and I suspect most bishops are aware of that.

Rays of hope

Having said that, the current process is certainly an improvement of what came before under the preceding two popes, where synods of bishops were a sort of stage-managed act whose agenda, discussions, and conclusions were almost entirely controlled by the Roman Curia and the Pope. It caused a huge amount of frustration not only among the laity, but among bishops themselves.

Now at least the consultation of the laity has been made an essential, constitutive part of the synodal process, and my sense is that a majority of bishops in Europe welcomes that.

And even though in theory bishops can still ignore or hand wave away whatever emerges from such a consultation, it becomes more difficult for them to do so without thereby undermining their own authority even further. Again, I believe a majority of bishops understands that.

So overall, I’m cautiously positive about this new course kick-started by Pope Francis. Although still entirely within the clericalist canon law, the mere fact of having made the consultation of all baptised a legal requirement as the first stage of all future synods has the potential for upending the current clerical structures.

Fear of change

There has been pushback, of course, on all the well-known issues. Occasionally appeals have been made to the primacy of spiritual conversion, as if that would make structural reforms superfluous (an old chestnut particularly among more conservative Catholic theologians since at least the Reformation).

I was particularly stricken by the intervention of the Archbishop of Riga Zbigņevs Stankevičs, in his position as spokesperson for the synodal consultation in the Catholic Church in Latvia. But rather than presenting the results of that consultation, he highlighted instead what he regarded as good results obtained by him, with colleagues from the Catholic hierarchy.

Among them, he mentioned the successful political pressure he personally applied against the legalisation of same-sex unions, and against the ratification by Latvia of the 2011 Istanbul Convention against domestic violence.

His argument against the latter was that it was a backdoor for “gender ideology”, and unconstitutional. This was struck down by the Supreme Court of Latvia itself in 2021, although Archbishop Stankevičs omitted mentioning that detail.

While Archbishop Stankevičs’ views were a minority in Prague, they were a stark reminder of the wild variety of opinions among Catholics in Europe alone.

The Final Document summarising the discussion of the European ecclesial assembly in Prague

The document recognizes the differences of opinion concerning the main issues around church reform: that alone is a small if welcome step forward.

However – just like it had been the case for the Document for the Continental Stage – the document which came out of Prague does little beyond merely listing those differences, and recommends no solutions.

The document also submits a final list of eight priority topics for further discussion at the Synod of Bishops in Rome in October 2023.

On the one hand, it is unfortunate that no explanation is provided as to which criteria were used to compile the concluding list of eight priorities. Was it their relative frequency of their emergence during the discussion? We are not told, and that is a lacuna which should be remedied.

On the other hand, four of those priority topics stood out to me. Specifically, and proceeding from the most general to the most particular, the document ends by asking further discussion on how to exercise authority in a “synodal” way; how to determine “which decisions belong on which level, from the local to the universal”; how to relate ordained and non-ordained ministries; and last but not least, it voices a request for the synod in Rome to “take concrete and courageous decisions on the role of women within the Church and on their greater involvement at all levels, also in decision-making and decision-taking processes”.

In summary: the mere fact that the document acknowledges widespread disagreements with some official Catholic teachings – on women’s ordination, same-sex relationships, the exclusion of laypeople from church governance, and so on – is a welcome change.

And even though bishops can still ignore that rare expression of the (dissenting) voice of the laity – at least if we stick strictly to canon law – it becomes more difficult for them to do so without thereby undermining their own authority even further. I believe a majority of bishops understands that.

By Luca Badini Confalonieri

Endnote:

[1] The full passage, in Italian: “Va detto che le sintesi hanno fornito un lungo elenco di temi emerso dalle consultazioni e registrato con puntualità dalle Conferenze episcopali. Quell’elenco non costituisce l’agenda del Sinodo, come abbiamo ribadito con il card. Hollerich nella recente lettera a tutti i Vescovi: non lo può, non solo per il numero dei temi, impossibile da assumere e sottoporre a un serio discernimento, ma perché il tema del Sinodo già esiste: «Per una Chiesa sinodale: comunione, partecipazione, missione». Non si tratta in alcun modo di una imposizione che riduce la libertà di parola, ma di un atto di rispetto nei confronti della Chiesa e di quanti si sono dedicati ad approfondire il tema.”

Some News reports on the European ecclesial assembly in February 2023 in Prague:

1. Sarah Mac Donald, “Catholic Church must welcome all as equals to be truly ‘synodal’“, The Tablet, 01 Feb 2023: “Dr Luca Badini Confalonieri, director of research at the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, said the Church ‘desperately needs a constitution’. The revised Code of Canon Law maintained the exclusion of the laity from exercising governance, he said, thereby making true co-responsibility impossible. It denied any institutional expression of the converging consensus of the Church, thus ensuring the laity would have no role in decision-making. “We must work together to ensure that future recommendations of the synod produce concrete changes in canon law, in order to prevent the current clerical system from continuing by inertia,” he said.
2. Sarah Mac Donald, “After synodal assembly Europe’s bishops pledge to ‘work tirelessly’ to enlarge Catholic tent“, National Catholic Reporter, 15 Feb 2023.
3. Maria 2.0, Newsletter, no. 3 (March 2023): „Die bloße Tatsache, dass das Dokument weitverbreiteten Widerspruch gegenüber einigen Punkten der offiziellen katholischen Lehren anerkennt – bezüglich der Frauenweihe, gleichgeschlechtlicher Beziehungen, des Ausschlusses der Laien von der Kirchenleitung und so weiter –, ist eine begrüßenswerte Veränderung. Und obwohl Bischöfe noch immer die seltene Äußerung der (Gegen)stimmen von Laien ignorieren können – zumindest wenn wir streng am kanonischen Recht festhalten –, wird es doch schwieriger für sie, dies zu tun, ohne dadurch ihre eigene Autorität noch weiter zu unterminieren. Ich glaube, die Mehrheit der Bischöfe versteht das.“ Dr. Luca Badini Confalonieri, Direktor für Forschung, Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, Großbritannien. 

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A series of short and accessible reflections on church authority, written by Dr. John Wijngaards, is now available in several languages (English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish). The English version has been published by UCA News and The Synodal Times.

You can find an overview of the content of each session on our sister website. In the future, the same webpage will also have links to the various language versions.

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