In an unprecedented decision that shows the will of Pope Francis to give more responsibility to women in the Church, the Pontiff has decided to grant the right to vote to women and lay people who are elected to participate as members in the upcoming synods of bishops This is an important change that will affect these periodic meetings of prelates, especially before the synod on synodality, an assembly that is being prepared these years and that will culminate with two meetings in Rome in October 2023 and 2024.
Francis has approved some changes that have to do with this Vatican body, the synod of bishops, which aims to periodically address the concrete concerns and also the transformation needs of the Catholic Church. It has existed since the Vatican II council, which modernized the Church. At the end of the synods, the bishops vote on certain specific proposals and present them in a document to the Pope, who may or may not listen to their opinions and has the final say in a text of his own. They don’t always agree, as happened in 2020 when Francis rejected a proposal to allow some married men to be ordained in the Amazon region to alleviate an acute shortage of priests.
But until now, only men had the right to vote in this final document. Women had traditionally participated as observers or experts, without being able to express their opinion. Under these new rules, five religious will join five religious as representatives of the orders who can vote on the text. In addition, Francis has decided to abolish the figure of auditors and replace it with “70 more members, not bishops, who represent other faithful and who can be priests, consecrated persons, deacons or lay faithful and who come from local churches”. half of whom are expected to be women. “All of them will have the right to vote”, emphasize the new rules.
The Pope has thus listened to a historic claim by Catholic groups of women who for decades insisted on having greater representation in the Church. Until now, the most important step in this direction had been the appointment, in February 2021, of a woman as deputy secretary of the synod of bishops, the French religious Nathalie Becquart, who could vote, but in her capacity as deputy secretary.
However, the Vatican has announced this step discreetly, probably so as not to inconvenience the bishops. “It is an important change, not a revolution”, wanted to emphasize Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, Archbishop of Luxembourg and rapporteur of the Synod of Synodality. “Revolutions divide, demand victims. On the other hand, we don’t want victims, we want to move forward together”, he assured.
The cardinal responsible for the synod, Mario Grech, expressed himself in the same sense, who said that “it will continue to be a synod of bishops, but there will be this participation as lay members”. The episcopal nature of the synod, explains a statement, will not be altered, “but confirmed”. In the end, the non-bishop members with voting rights in the assembly will be less than 25%, and the new additions will be chosen by Pope Francis himself from a list of 140 people indicated during the international meetings of the episcopal conferences and the assembly of patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Among the undersecretary Becquart, the 5 women religious and the 35 non-bishop members of the female sex, there will be 41 women who will have a voice and vote in an assembly of around 370 people.
These rules will apply to the important synod of the synodality, a remarkable date in the pontificate of Francis, which aims to open the Church after a long process of listening for two years asking Catholics how it can best respond to the needs of today’s world. These are also controversial matters, such as the requests of the influential German Church, which has insisted on moving towards the consideration of ordaining women priests and accepting homosexuals, ideas that generated such discomfort that the Vatican even there was talk of a possible schism.
