Rome, Italy – When Pope Francis was elected in 2013, he faced loud calls to expand the role of women within the Roman Catholic Church.
To some extent, he delivered. Francis opened key meetings to women; allowed them to senior roles within the powerful central bureaucracy of the Church; and appointed the first female head of the Vatican governorate. For some, these were giant strides for a deeply conservative institution. But to many others, Francis’s moves fell short of what was needed to make the Church truly inclusive.
Now, as cardinals hold daily meetings before beginning the process of voting following his death on April 21, the role of women in the Church remains a divisive issue. When the cardinals finally emerge from their cocoon in the Vatican, will they have picked a pope who will build on Francis’s changes — or someone who might roll them back?
“Women are not holding their breath,” said Kate McElwee, the executive director of Women’s Ordination Conference, a nonprofit focused on women’s rights within Church institutions. “There is some anxiety on whether the next papacy will see some backsliding on the progress because there is a real desire for the project of [women’s] inclusion to continue.”
The incomplete project
Francis’s legacy, when it comes to women in the Church, is still up for debate.
He gave women the power to vote on issues related to the Church at the Synod of Bishops. He also appointed a dozen women to high-ranking positions, including Barbara Jatta as the director of the Vatican Museums, Sister Raffaella Petrini as the president of the powerful Vatican City State, and Sister Simona Brambilla as the first female prefect of a Vatican office overseeing religious orders for both men and women. Overall, throughout Pope Francis’s papacy, the presence of women in the Church’s workforce rose from about 19 percent to 23.4 percent, according to Vatican figures.
But to some, these were just cosmetic changes. The pope did not move forward on the polarising issue of women’s ordination, particularly as deacons or priests.
In the Catholic Church, the role of a deacon involves certain religious functions, such as assisting during mass and performing baptism, but does not allow carrying out most sacraments.
Pope Francis set up two commissions – the first in 2016 and the second in 2020 – to consider whether women could serve as deacons by studying if that was the case in the early centuries of the Church. The report produced by the first group was never released to the public as the commission was not able to agree on the issue, according to Francis, while the second never concluded its work. In 2024, during an interview with US broadcaster CBS, Pope Francis gave a flat “no” to the ordination of women deacons. But a few months later, he signed off on the final document of a synod, saying the issue should remain an “open” question.
“It feels like he unlocked the door but didn’t fully open it,” McElwee said.
And as for women becoming priests, Pope John Paul II in 1994 issued a ban that has since been repeatedly reaffirmed.
All-men’s club
That underrepresentation is in stark display these days as members of an all-male body are discussing the fate of the Church. At pre-conclave meetings in Rome, cardinals are discussing what they believe are the core issues and priorities that a future pope should be able to tackle – from the Church’s sexual and financial scandals and the global crisis of faith to the ties with China and the importance of canon law.
Most of the cardinals who will vote for the new pontiff inside the Sistine Chapel this week have been appointed by Pope Francis and are aligned with many aspects of his agenda, such as social justice, migration and climate change. Yet, observers say they have not spelled out their positions on women in the Church clearly.
In 2023, Cardinal Anders Arborelius, the bishop of Stockholm, Sweden, said it was “important to see that there are other ways” for women to serve the Church “than ordained ministry”. And in a speech at a pre-conclave meeting this week, Beniamino Stella, an Italian cardinal seen as close to the late pope, surprised fellow clergymen by accusing Francis of having created “chaos” in the Church by opening the governance of Vatican offices to men and women who were not part of the clergy.
Sister Marie, a nun who arrived in the Vatican from Marseille, France, awaiting the election of the new pope, agreed.
“Everybody has their role and we are happy to stay at our place, which is not within the hierarchy of the Church,” she said, asking her surname to be withheld. “It [women as deacons or priests] would denaturalise the institution of the Church and the process of transmitting the faith,” she said.
There is also the conservative guard that was outraged by Francis’s decision to appoint nonclerical people to top positions. In an interview with the Italian newspaper Repubblica last week, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller from Germany, a leading conservative, noted how the Roman Curia – the administrative body of the Roman Catholic Church – is an ecclesiastical body that should not be managed by lay people, likely a criticism of Sister Brambilla’s appointment last year.
A reality already there
Still, the Church cannot afford to ignore the subject of women and their role any more, suggested Sabina Pavone, a professor of history of Christianity at the University of Naples L’Orientale and member of the Italian Society of Historians.
“There is an awareness that this topic needs to be addressed because it continues to be considered one of the hot topics, but how to address it – that is not clear yet,” Pavone said.
The issue of women’s inclusion in the Church is increasingly also a practical matter central to the very functioning of Catholic institutions, she pointed out. Women already run the show in many areas of the world, from managing parishes, supporting local healthcare systems and teaching, while fewer men are entering the priesthood in most places.
“The Church has already changed,” Pavone said. “And the Church has to keep pace with this reality.”
