VATICAN CITY — In an opening with historic significance, Pope Francis said he wants to study the possibility of ordaining women as deacons, a step that could for the first time open the ranks of the Catholic Church’s all-male clergy to women.
The order of deacons was reinstituted in the Catholic Church after the reforms of the 1960s, and while deacons cannot celebrate the Eucharist like a priest, a deacon can preach at mass, preside at weddings and funerals and perform baptisms.
But in restoring the diaconate the Church also restricted ordination as a deacon to “mature married men” over 35.
Many protested that limitation, saying the earliest Christian texts also speak of “deaconesses” and arguing that the modern Church also should allow women deacons.
St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI were both theologically conservative pontiffs who said that such a move was unjustified and could undermine the concept of the all-male priesthood.
But Francis said May 12 he agreed the matter should be given more careful consideration, telling hundreds of nuns from around the world that he himself always wondered about the role of deaconesses in the early Church.
Francis noted that deaconesses played a different role in the early Church from that of deacons, an office established by the apostles to focus on caring for widows and the poor so the apostles could focus on preaching.
Francis also has repeatedly said — as he reiterated in early June — that he wants to see women assume greater and more authoritative roles in the Church, but he does not want to “clericalize” them by reducing such growth to mimicking jobs done by men.
Whatever happens, the fact that Francis has opened the door to the debate and the possibility of ordaining women makes it a landmark moment.
(RNS)
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