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Cardinal Leading Catholics’ Churchwide Consultation Wrestles With Tradition and Change

When the world’s Catholic bishops met in Rome for the Synod on the Family in 2015, the conversations were dominated by the possibility that the pope would allow divorced Catholics who have married to take Communion. (He softened but didn’t reverse the ban.) Media coverage of the 2019 synod on the Pan-Amazon region largely focused on whether women would be given the right to serve as deacons, often a first step toward ordination. (They were not.)

In this synod, female leadership is again a factor, and Grech said that women’s roles in the church will “of course” be a part of the conversation, pointing to the amount devoted to the topic in the working document for the next stage.

But Grech advised Catholics to “have patience.”

“We in Christian communities have to grow our appreciation for what women do in the church,” he said. “And we must create more spaces for female contribution, which makes a huge difference,” he added, pointing to the need for more women theologians to shift the debate.

“Let us all pray and ask the Holy Spirit to give us instructions so that all who are baptized — without distinction between men and women — can find a space, a calling, a mission.”

This article originally appeared here