‘Holy Orders Reserved for Men’

While some progressive activists had hoped that the pope would a minimum of permit ladies deacons, the Roman Pontiff stated this may be tough because of the diaconate being “the first degree of holy orders in the Catholic Church, followed by the priesthood and finally the episcopate.”

“I think we would undermine the essence of the Church if we considered only the priestly ministry, that is, the ministerial way,” he stated, stating that girls mirror Jesus’s bride the Church.

“The fact that the woman does not access ministerial life is not a deprivation, because her place is much more important,” he instructed Argentine journalist Sergio Rubin and Italian journalist Francesca Ambrogetti . “I think we err in our catechesis in explaining these things, and ultimately we fall back on an administrative criterion that does not work in the long run.”

Pope Francis did, nonetheless, reward ladies for their “ecclesial intuition.”

“On the other hand, with respect to the charism of women, I want to say very clearly that from my personal experience, they have a great ecclesial intuition,” he stated.

While some have stated that girls’s ordination would deliver “more people closer to the Church” together with an finish to priestly celibacy, the pope disagreed.

“Lutherans ordain women, but still few people go to church,” he stated. “Their priests can marry, but despite that they can’t grow the number of ministers. The problem is cultural. We should not be naive and think that programmatic changes will bring us the solution.”