VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Like unpaid bills arriving for the inheritor of a house, reports will soon arrive on Pope Leo XIII’s desk offering possible steps to take on some of the most hot-button issues facing the Catholic Church — among them the question of ordaining women as deacons.
The 10 reports are being generated by study groups of theologians and canon lawyers tasked by Pope Francis with discerning a way forward for the church on how it selects its bishops, combats poverty and relates to women and LGBTQ Catholics. These issues threatened to derail the Synod on Synodality, a three-year-long, worldwide series of meetings initiated by Francis in 2021 in which Catholics were invited to enumerate their priorities of the church. Instead, Francis created study groups to report back on the most controversial topics.
Study Group 5 focused on “some theological and canonical issues around specific ministerial forms,” including whether women should be allowed to serve as deacons — ordained ministers who perform some of the sacraments and preach at Mass, but who do not celebrate the Eucharist, hear confessions or anoint the sick. While Francis ruled out the possibility of ordaining women to be priests in 2024, he said only that the question …
