In the News

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — The seven women stood outside the gates of the Vatican dressed in cardinal red, each carrying a scarlet parasol emblazoned with a phrase of female empowerment. “Ordain Women.” “Reform Means Women.” “It’s Reigning Men.” They were there to greet the 197 cardinals arriving Monday morning (Aug. 29) for a highly anticipated…
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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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More than a half million U.S. Catholics have participated in synodal listening sessions over the past year as part of Pope Francis’ two-year process of grassroots listening ahead of the 2023 Synod of Bishops in Rome, and responses indicate that many Americans want a more welcoming church that reaches out to the marginalized, especially the LGBTQ community,…
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Administrative tinkering to Vatican bureaucracy is hardly the stuff of stop-the-presses headlines, but Pope Francis’ recent naming of three women to the office that helps select bishops around the world is certainly more substantive than changing the office’s name from “congregation” to “dicastery.”… …A statement from the Women’s Ordination Conference, or WOC, welcomed the pope’s move as…
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WOC Executive Director, Kate McElwee, was quoted in several outlets in response to Pope Francis’ appointment of three women to the Dicastery for Bishops, including: The Daily Mail The Times (London) AFP

(CNN) Pope Francis put another crack in the Catholic Church’s “stained glass ceiling” last week, announcing reforms that will allow women to head some Vatican offices. The Vatican is now free to hire the best person for these jobs, instead of being limited to an ever-shrinking group of cassocked men. The news caught some by…
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Read Executive Editor Heidi Schlumpf’s March 11, 2022 column in NCR: As the second anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic approaches, I recall (with the aid of Google Calendar) that my last work trip before the lockdown was in January 2020 to cover the lead-up to the Democratic presidential primary in Iowa. I interviewed Marianne Williamson the night…
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The Tablet (UK) named 50 “remarkable women” leaders of the Catholic church, including WOC executive director, Kate McElwee. Read the full article here. There is one tragedy that an increasing number of Catholics agree on – the Church’s failure to make full use of the enormous wealth of experience and the talents, expertise and special…
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Executive Director, Kate McElwee responds to the suggestion that the Women’s Ordination Conference might impose an “American activist agenda” onto the synodal process. A hopeless believer in dialogue, I regularly send messages to the Vatican and bishops to inform them of what the Women’s Ordination Conference is up to. These messages are almost always met…
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