A New World Is Possible: Reflecting on Peace, Women, and a Listening Church

Today would have been my late father’s 87th birthday. Manuel Jorge Hidalgo loved being Catholic, in large part because he loved the Church’s solidarity with the poor, the vision of Jesus’ Beatitudes, and the causes of peace. When he was in college in Cuba, he studied Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, and his first gift to the woman who would become my mother was a book by Fr. Lombardi entitled, “Por Un Mundo Nuevo” (Towards a New World).

He passed away in 2023, a couple of years before the election of Pope Leo XIV. My dad would have marveled at the election of the first American pope. He would have joined in the Holy Father’s ongoing call for Catholics and people of good will worldwide to pray for peace. “Prayer teaches us how to act. In prayer, our limited human possibilities are joined to the infinite possibilities of God,” said Pope Leo during his Saturday prayer vigil for peace. “Let us unite the moral and spiritual strength of the millions and billions of men and women who today choose to believe in peace, caring for the wounds and repairing the damage left behind by the madness of war.”

The Holy Father warned us that rejecting the logic of war may lead to scorn. This week we witnessed our U.S. president deride the pope for speaking to Gospel values. But we remain firm that the resurrection we profess calls us to be people of life. We are encouraged that the president of the U.S. bishops, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, called the president’s words disheartening and re-asserted that Pope Leo is “the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.”

It is this boldness to speak from the truth of the Gospel that compelled us to begin the work of Discerning Deacons in 2021 – we turn five years old on April 29! In the early days, my dad was a regular attendee of our monthly St. Phoebe Prayer for a synodal Church. He marveled to see Pope Francis animate a growing interest for a listening, synodal Church in which Catholics strive to learn the ways of encounter, listening, dialogue and discernment.

He marveled seeing women summoning up their courage to speak out loud the vocational calls in their hearts to serve as deacons, seeking to animate responses to the urgent pastoral needs of our times.

During the pandemic, we lived in an intergenerational home, joined by three of his granddaughters (my nieces). My dad loved seeing the hope which DD engendered in my nieces — the hope that one day women could preach from our Catholic pulpits. Over the years, I’ve met other fathers and grandfathers drawn to the work of Discerning Deacons, because they care that their daughters and granddaughters find a place of belonging in this Church.

This week, we also lift up the courageous speech of Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, recently interviewed by Vatican News about the need for the Church to address women’s access to ordained ministry as deacons. He said that “It is so important that women feel that they are welcome in the church, not just for filling up the benches, but to fully participate in the life and mission of the Church.”

A future decision to include women in the ordained diaconate requires broad ecclesial consensus, said the cardinal, who as Relator General of the Synod guides the theological and practical direction of the Synod on Synodality. Cardinal Hollerich added, “I can feel that many of the girls of our youth are sad because they feel that they are not completely recognised by the Church.” He added that this “makes me sad as a pastor.”

I am hopeful that in a listening Church, the sadness of our girls and youth is heard. We can keep praying that the laments and the hopes of our young people are considered during this Synod Implementation Phase.

A new world is possible.