She refers to the pope's interview for a CBS "60 Minutes" show in May.

In it Francis said he was opposed to women deacons if it involves the sacrament of Holy Orders.

The "women deacons" question has been raised repeatedly during the Synod on Synodality process she says. "Francis's speech caused some perplexity, but an interview is not the magisterium of the church."

"We're living through the second stage of a synod on synodality, and I know that it won't resolve all the necessary issues of change in the church.

"But it will open up ways for us to continue the conversation and for all of us."

Conversion needed

Pereira Manso is the vice president of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA).

"We have important changes underway in the Church" she says.

Before many of the specific doctrinal questions can be considered, a "conversion" of the Church's way of being is needed she says.

"This includes the pope, the laity and everyone in between."

The Church in the Amazon

For years, Pereira Manso and other religious sisters have worked in remote parts of the Amazon. There are few priests. Many faithful lack regular access to the sacraments.

While the pope may be hesitant to back the restoration of the female diaconate, much of the work that these sisters already do is that of diaconal ministry.

CEAMA is the first-of-its-kind ecclesial assembly to include women in a leadership position.

This will continue regardless of what is officially decided during the Synod Pereira Manso says.

"I continue to believe in the service that we women offer the Church and the mission of being bridges and not letting prophecy fall.

"This is how we will continue to serve the people of God, who live on the margins, on the peripheries and in the cellars of humanity, in defence of life, the earth and rights."

Pereira Manso was an auditor at the 2019 Amazon synod. We have "reinvented ourselves" as a Church in the Amazon through a range of new proposals she says.

These include an Amazon liturgical rite, expanded ministries, intercultural dialogue and bilingual education.

Women's ministries

Women's ministries were discussed explicitly last year during a CEAMA meeting with the pope.

"He told us that there was no turning back from the changes underway."

He noted work is continuing for the Church to have a fuller discernment on these questions.

As she looks ahead to the next synod on synodality meeting, Pereira Manso has a particular prayer.

She prays for increased openness on the "topics where the Church still lacks consensus and transparency, so that they are in fact the action of the Divine Ruah and not the fear of moving into deeper waters".

Source

• NCR Online

This week, in a CBS TV interview, he explained that ordaining women has never been on his agenda, but non-ordained female deacons could be.

Female diaconate supported

In February, one of Francis' theological advisers, Sr Linda Pocher, said while the Church wasn't considering women's priestly ordination, Francis actively supports the idea of female deacons.

She said discussions about the role of women in the Church were an integral part of the ongoing Synod of Bishops on Synodality, scheduled to end this October.

Francis confirmed this point in the TV interview.

He told the interviewer that he wouldn't consider female deacons with Holy Orders.

"But women have always had, I would say, the function of deaconesses without being deacons, right?"

"Women are of great service as women, not as ministers, as ministers in this regard, within the Holy Orders."

They are "the ones who move changes forward, all sorts of changes."

"...making space in the Church for women does not mean giving them a ministry, no. The Church is a mother, and women in the Church are the ones who help foster that motherliness," he continued.

"Don't forget that the ones who never abandoned Jesus were the women," he pointed out. "The men all fled."

Surprise reversal

The pope's response surprised some who believed he was open to the possibility of ordaining female deacons.

During his pontificate, he has created two commissions to study the question of female deacons.

The first, tasked with examining the role of female deacons in church history, came back with inconclusive results.

The second commission, which focused more on the ministry of the diaconate, met in September 2021 and July 2022. The results of that work have not been made public.

The October 2023 Synod on Synodality where the subject was further discussed concluded the topic required further study.

In its final document, the synod assembly asked that the embargoed reports from the first study commission be given to the synod assembly this October to help guide their recommendations.

In the period between the two meetings, ten study groups organised by the Vatican's synod office and others will look into the topics the synod said merited further discussion.

One asked "theological and canonical questions about specific ministerial forms" which include "the question of women's possible access to the diaconate".

Discussion vs discernment

Francis has changed his mind in the past about matters he'd previously seemed to favour.

In 2017, he seemed to open the door to ordaining married men capable of ministering to the many remote communities in the Amazon.

However soon after the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon closed, Francis said it was not possible to ordain married men since the Amazon Synod was merely a discussion.

"There was a discussion … a rich discussion … a well-founded discussion, but no discernment, which is something different from just arriving at a good and justified consensus or at a relative majority" Francis said.

A synod is a "spiritual exercise," a period for discernment of how the Holy Spirit is speaking, and for self-examination regarding the motive beyond positions.

"Walking together means dedicating time to honest listening, capable of making us reveal and unmask (or at least to be sincere) the apparent purity of our positions and to help us discern the wheat that - up to the Parousia [the second coming] - always grows among the weeds."

Source

• CathNews
• CathNews
• CathNews
• NCR Online
• Catholic News Agency
• America Magazine

Pope Francis approved the 10-member commission, which is the second one he has appointed during his pontificate.

The commission members include equal numbers of men and women representing the United States and six European countries.

Deacons are ordained ministers who can preside at weddings, baptisms and funerals. Although they can preach, they cannot celebrate Mass.

At the moment married men can be ordained as deacons. Women cannot, though historians say women served as deacons in the early Christian church.

The first commission Francis established in 1916 sought to respond to women demanding greater roles in the 21st century.

The members failed to reach a consensus and the group effectively ended its work.

At last year's Synod on the Amazon region, the question of women deacons was again brought to Francis's attention.

The region's bishops called for the question to be revisited given the shortage of priests in the Amazon.

The new commission appears to be Francis's response to the bishops' request.

Unlike the 2016 commission's mandate, which was limited to the early church, Amazonian bishops wanted the new commission to focus on a wider brief.

They wanted the real-life experiences of their region's Catholic faithful to be taken into consideration in any new evaluation.

Advocates for women deacons say women could help priests in the ministry and governance of the church. They could also help address priest shortages in several parts of the world.

Opponents say allowing women to be deacons would become a slippery slope toward ordaining women to the priesthood a ministry reserved for men.

Source

• Religion News Service
• Image: Catholic Philly

It hasn't solved the problem in the Ukranian Greek Catholic Rite which allows priests to be married, says Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk.

Shevchuk is the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

He was responding to questions about next month's Catholic bishops' synod in Rome, which will consider allowing older married men who live in isolated areas to be ordained because of an acute a priest shortage in their region.

Although in the Ukraine itself there are many priestly vocations in the Ukranian Rite (which is full communion with Rome), the high numbers aren't matched in seminaries in other countries, Shevchuk says.

"The familial state does not favor the increase in vocations to the priesthood. This is our experience.

"The same church with the same way of living the priestly vocation in other countries around the world does not enjoy this quantity of vocations."

Noting the call to the priesthood comes from God alone, Shevchuk describes it as "a vocation which can neither be increased nor decreased based on the state in which this vocation is lived," including whether the priest is married or celibate.

Priesthood is "a way of offering one's life for the good of the Church," he adds.

Even with the high numbers in local seminaries, the shortage of priests - even in Ukraine - is "a challenge for everyone." Shevchuk says.

And, no - he doesn't have any "recipes" to solve the problem.

What is important, he says, is to "look to the essential: That is, the vocation to the priesthood" as a call from God.

It is "a profound call by the Lord to be his priest. All the rest must be submissive to this central call."

Shevchuk says if he could give some advice to the bishops meeting for this year's Synod, he would say: "Don't look for easy solutions to difficult problems."

Instead, given that the priesthood as a whole is in crisis, the essence of the vocation in itself "must be developed."

A Synod of Bishops on the priesthood focusing on ways to "understand the best way to live this vocation" is called for, he suggests.

Source

• Crux Now
• Image:YouTube

Cardinal-designate Michael Czerny and Bishop David Martinez De Aguirre Guinea say the synod's focus, "Amazonia: New paths for the church and for an integral ecology," will help the church make its presence felt and voice heard in the Amazon region.

The rainforest region crosses nine countries in South America. It has experienced significant deforestation, negatively impacting the indigenous populations in the area and leading to a loss of biodiversity.

Czerny and Martinez say the synod will take place at a time when the region is approaching "a point of no return," and "both human and natural life are suffering serious and perhaps irreversible destruction".

In an article entitled "Why the Amazon merits a synod," they say the synod is an effort to implement Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si'.

The encyclical observes the "gross inequality and cruel marginalization" caused by financial and consumerist greed and calls "for a new attitude toward nature and the social environment."

It's a wake-up call to the entire world, to all of humanity, Czerny and Martinez say.

"But it also suggests a new socio-pastoral orientation and dynamic for the church, which must understand the challenges faced by individuals and families and groups within these various dimensions."

However, the church cannot give spiritual guidance and pastoral care if people are understood in isolation.

It needs to be integrated with people as well - how they live and function within the actual natural, economic and social conditions that they face.

Czerny and Martinez say the environmental problems are not the only ones besetting the region.

"Mercantilism, secularization, the throwaway culture and the idolatry of money" coupled with decreasing numbers of priests and religious "is endangering the presence of the Catholic Church among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon.

These types of challenge require a response that moves from a "ministry of visits to a ministry of presence," Czerny and Martinez say.

"This is why, during the October Synod, the entire world should walk with the people of the Amazon; not to expand or divert the agenda, but to help the synod to make a difference.

"The Amazon region is huge, and its challenges are immense. If destroyed, the impacts will be felt worldwide."

Source

• NCR Online
• Image: Rainforest Rescue

"What is the Amazonian face? Can a synod next October of this magnitude be built with a presentation so far from reality, from identity, from respect for what is different, when pre-established schemes of interpretation of reality deform what is real?" he questioned.

Bishop emeritus José Luis Azcona, says the Instrumentum fails to address the Church's most pressing challenges: a growing Pentacostal majority; child labour, abuse and trafficking; and a spiritual crisis.

The growing Pentecostal majority (in some parts eighty percent) is important because "the Amazon, at least the Brazilian Amazon, is no longer Catholic," Azcona says.

The Pentecostal church has moved into several indigenous ethnic groups, overrunning cultures, ethnic identities and indigenous peoples in the name of the Gospel. This is a serious phenomenon in today's Amazon, Azcona says.

Another serious issue is child abuse - also overlooked in the Instrumentum.

"Unfortunately, the synod doesn't know... the faces of anguished, re-victimized and denigrated children, [abused] by their own parents and relatives, subjected to a slavery that forms an essential part of the abandoned and destroyed face of Jesus ...

"Where is the pastoral sensitivity, so evident and so firmly expressed by the Holy Father Pope Francis, expressed by those responsible for the Instrumentum laboris?" he asked.

Azcona is critical of the Instrumentum's themes around the inculturation of the Gospel in the Amazon region.

These "are presented in a context of immanence, Neo-Pelagianism, leveling out the Gospel with Amazonian (indigenous) cultures, ecclesiologically devoid of theological and pastoral foundations, annulling the Gospel of salvation."

"Forgetting this fundamental principle renders the synod useless and nullifies the specific and unique power of God in the Gospel, as well as all missionary dynamism ...".

Azcona says "the need for repentance for the forgiveness of sins is the fundamental challenge the Church has to face in the Amazon.

Turning to the ordination of "viri probati" to serve in the Amazon, Azcona says it will be useless because the Church everywhere needs repentance, conversion, the faith that saves.

"Why ordain viri probati within a priesthood in crisis?" he asked.

"... Let's not entertain a discussion on the legitimacy of these questions. What is certain is an affirmative response would open up the risk of a division, of a real schism in the Church."

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: National Catholic Reporter