Our Lady of Guadalupe Circle member Rosella Kinoshameg joins with women in ministry to meet with Pope Francis on the eve of the Synod. / Rosella Kinoshameg, member du Cercle Notre-Dame de Guadalupe, se joint aux femmes engagées dans le ministère pour rencontrer le paper François à la veille du Synode.
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We are delighted to share a dream come true – Pope Francis welcomed an in-person encounter with diaconal women in ministry from around the world.
The dream was realized on September 30, when the Holy Father received Cardinal Pedro Barreto, SJ, president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA) and women in ministry from Australia, Brazil, Canada and the U.S.
“We’ve been growing this dream of a prophetic, synodal diaconate,” Casey Stanton, co-director of Discerning Deacons told NCR in recounting the encounter with the pope. “There are women serving in the peripheries all over the world, and we’ve been walking together on this synodal path.”
Vatican Media published an article in Portuguese about the role of CEAMA in guiding the Church’s ongoing conversation about women in ministry, with quotes by Peruvian Cardinal Barreto and Brazilian Sr. Laura Vicuña, CF, vice president of CEAMA.
Australian Sr. Elizabeth Young, rsm, wrote a first-person account of the encounter on her blog, Liturgy at the Margins, noting that Pope Francis spoke of the value of women’s transformational leadership.
Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu, professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University and an advisor to Discerning Deacons, is writing Dispatches from Rome about her experience representing educators and accompanying women in ministry during her first journey to Rome.
The group also included Brazilian Franciscan Catechist Sr. Terezinha Dalciego, Canadian JoAnn Lopez, and two Indigenous women from Canada, Rosella Kinoshameg and Mary O’Donnell. They wore orange shirts symbolizing the reconciliation movement of those harmed by residential schools and proclaiming that “every child matters.” Documentary filmmaker Pilar Timpane accompanied the group.
Following the encounter with Pope Francis, they will soon be joined by several dozen Discerning Deacons pilgrims making their way to Rome to participate in the public activities of the Synod on Communion, Participation, and Mission. We also will co-host a couple of public events in Rome and hope you will join us for our St. Phoebe Global Prayer for a Synodal Church.
There is a lot of cautious hope about the upcoming deliberations of the Second General Assembly meeting for a month in October. Recently, I was interviewed by Religion News Service about what is at stake with the Church’s discernment about women’s participation – as young women exit the Catholic Church at a more rapid rate than men. Can Church structures be reformed to allow more women to answer their call to ministry and service?
This remarkable week includes the annual celebration of the feast day of St. Francis on October 4. (It’s not common knowledge that St. Francis was ordained a deacon, but not a priest.) As we live into the graces of this week, we want to encourage you to read a prophetic op-ed, For every Francis, a Clare, written by Maureen O’Connell Ph.D. in 2013 and published in The Washington Post two days after Jorge Mario Bergolio was elected pope. Lifting up the heroic dynamic duo St. Francis and St. Clare, Maureen wrote: ”In some ways, their partnership should be nothing new for followers of Christ, since women were pivotal both to Jesus’ ministry and the early Jesus movement. But since such partnerships remain a rarity, Francis and Clare might remind the new pope: if you want reform, work with tenacious women.”
By Maureen O’Connell