{"id":21650,"date":"2025-05-21T00:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T04:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/?p=21650"},"modified":"2025-05-20T16:00:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T20:00:18","slug":"pursuing-peace-and-justice-womens-roles-in-our-evolving-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/pursuing-peace-and-justice-womens-roles-in-our-evolving-church\/","title":{"rendered":"En busca de la paz y la justicia: el papel de las mujeres en nuestra Iglesia en evoluci\u00f3n"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since Pope Leo XIV\u2019s election, I have been excited to hear him speak about what will be some of his priorities \u2013 building bridges, promoting dialogue, peacemaking, continuing to become a synodal Church. These are all things we care about as diaconal people in ministry, and it\u2019s exciting to think about the ways we can support Pope Leo\u2019s efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, I also was concerned to see headlines and posts claiming Pope Leo is against women deacons. And as I talked about in a <\/span>reel on Instagram<\/span><\/a>, it\u2019s easy to jump to conclusions. But we honestly don\u2019t know where Pope Leo personally stands on a number of topics \u2014 yet.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what <\/b>do<\/i><\/b> we know? Then-Cardinal Robert Prevost was deeply involved in a synodal process with historic levels of women\u2019s participation.<\/b> He participated in two month-long Synod Assemblies in \u201823 and \u201824 that included 54 women voters along with women theologians and facilitators. And that process led to a powerful development in Church teaching:<\/span><\/p>\n

This Assembly asks for full implementation of all the opportunities already provided for in Canon Law with regard to the role of women, particularly in those places where they remain underutilised. There is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the Church: what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped. Additionally, the question of women\u2019s access to diaconal ministry remains open. This discernment needs to continue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paragraph 60 from the <\/span>Final Synod Document<\/span><\/a> is our roadmap during this implementation phase of the Synod. We can\u2019t forget \u2014 this isn\u2019t up to one man. <\/span>Synodal discernment about women in the diaconate is a collective effort.<\/b><\/p>\n

We\u2019re still building the structures to do that discernment well \u2014 as a Church, as women, and with our bishops.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, don\u2019t despair. There is much unfolding as Pope Leo guides the next steps of our becoming a more synodal, listening, inclusive Church. In the meantime, I commend a few articles that help to clarify, including the opinions of those who have worked with Pope Leo in this piece written by Nicole Winfield in the <\/span>Associated Press<\/span><\/a>, and by Dr. Phyllis Zagano\u2019s in <\/span>RNS<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

And for fun, I\u2019m sharing these brief, delightful IG posts between Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSP and CBS News Norah O\u2019Donnell speaking near St. Peter\u2019s Square in Rome about \u2013 the possibility of women deacons! <\/span>Post I<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Post II<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Post III<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

I am especially grateful for Sr. Rose\u2019s insight: \u201c[I]f there\u2019s a problem and women are not part of the solution it will not be solved in any type of long term, meaningful way. Women have to always be part of the solution.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s keep honoring this remarkable moment of living into a new papacy \u2014 and take<\/span> Pope Leo at his word when he first spoke<\/span><\/a> from the central balcony of St. Peter\u2019s Basilica where he offered thanksgiving and an understanding of what it means to be the Successor of Peter:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c…to walk together with you as a Church, united, ever pursuing peace and justice, ever seeking to act as men and women faithful to Jesus Christ, in order to proclaim the Gospel without fear, to be missionaries.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

This is our path forward.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Pope Leo XIV\u2019s election, I have been excited to hear him speak about what will be some of his priorities \u2013 building bridges, promoting dialogue, peacemaking, continuing to become a synodal Church. These are all things we care about as diaconal people in ministry, and it\u2019s exciting to think about the ways we can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21651,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"witness-tag":[],"class_list":["post-21650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21650"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21654,"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21650\/revisions\/21654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21650"},{"taxonomy":"witness-tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discerningdeacons.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/witness-tag?post=21650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}