FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEDecember 31, 2022 Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) joins Catholics worldwide to mourn the death of Pope Benedict XVI. His lifelong devotion to the Roman Catholic Church led him to offer a profound example of humility and willingness to overturn tradition by resigning from the papacy in 2013. However, as head of the Vatican’s doctrine…
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Editors’ note: On Nov. 22, five representatives of America Media interviewed Pope Francis in his residence at Santa Marta at the Vatican. They discussed a range of issues, including polarization in the U.S. church, racism, the war in Ukraine and the Vatican’s relations with China. The pope’s comments on the ordination of women in particular…
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For Immediate Release: November 28, 2022 In an interview with America Magazine, Pope Francis upheld the Catholic church’s unequal treatment of women by exploiting misogynistic metaphors to dismiss the sincerely discerned vocations of women. When asked what he might say to a woman who serves her church and experiences a call to priesthood, Francis responded…
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With the Vatican’s Oct. 27 release of the document to guide the next phase of Pope Francis’ innovative new process for the Synod of Bishops, the Catholic Church has shown it has the capacity to listen to its people. The 45-page synthesis of national and local listening sessions from countries around the world — known as the Working…
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For Immediate Release: 27 October 2022 The Women’s Ordination Conference is encouraged by the expansive “Working Document for the Continental Stage” released 27 October 2022 by the Vatican’s synod office, a text synthesizing national and local listening session reports that will serve as the basis for the next phase of Pope Francis’ now three-year synod…
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October 3, 2022 For Immediate Release On 4 October 2022, an international delegation from the Catholic Women’s Council (CWC), a global umbrella network of more than 60 Catholic women’s organizations, will present their synodal synthesis to the Vatican’s synod office. From March through June 2022, CWC coordinated many sessions of discernment, discussion, and prayer with…
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Seven protesters, including one Irish woman, were detained by police in Rome over their protest at the Vatican calling for women’s inclusion at all levels of the Catholic Church. Miriam Duignan joined six other women in St Peter’s Square yesterday to draw attention to the lack of any female presence at a consistory – a…
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ROME — As 197 Catholic cardinals, patriarchs and priests entered the Vatican on Aug. 29 for a closed-door, two-day meeting on the church’s governance, women’s ordination advocates gathered outside to protest the absence of women at the event — only to then be removed from the premises and later detained by Italian authorities. “We hoped…
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEAugust 29, 2022 On August 29, as Pope Francis convened an extraordinary two-day meeting of the world’s cardinals, a delegation of Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) processed towards the Vatican carrying red parasols with messages of inclusion and reform. Making their way toward the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the women welcomed…
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Campaigners shine a light on the Vatican’s exclusion of women ahead of historic meeting For Immediate release: 27 August 2022 On the eve of Pope Francis’ all-male consistory, Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) shined a bright light on one of the greatest cons-in-history: the exclusion of women from ordained ministry. In a stealth operation on the…
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