“I am feeling very positive,” said Miriam Duignan, co-director of WOW, calling the pope’s recent comments “a blessing for us.” She spoke to RNS at the Basilica of St. Prassede in Rome, where the group held a vigil for the synod on Tuesday (Oct. 3).
“The topic of women’s ordination is unresolved; it is not a settled question or fixed dogma,” Duignan said, referencing the pope’s answer to the dubia. “The question needs to be moved on from those abstract terms and from giving false hope to those who seek justice in the church and reassuring those who cling onto a medieval theology.”
At the vigil, women prayed next to a chapel with a mosaic showing Lady Theodora, mother to Pope Paschal I, with the inscription “Episcopa” (the Latin term for bishop) next to her head. While many experts and historians shrug off the term as a simple honorary, for the women’s ordination advocates it’s proof their dream was true before — and might become true again.
“Christ calls women clearly to be priests and deacons,” McElwee said at the vigil, while expressing her desire that one day “women will no longer have to read between the lines.”
This article originally appeared here.
