Increasing the visibility of women and tapping the wisdom they offer will surely encourage laypeople around the world. Religious sisters and nuns were ranked more trustworthy than bishops, priests and the Vatican in a recent survey of U.S. Catholics sponsored by America.
Besides taking up the challenge of exploring new frontiers of evangelization in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Brazilian women religious have also become evangelizers of the “old continent,” Europe, where female vocations have radically declined in recent decades.
Maria Cristina Cella Mocellin continued with the pregnancy and opted for treatment that would not jeopardize the life of her child, Riccardo, who was born in 1994.
There is a long way to go before women’s voices are satisfactorily integrated into the central leadership of the church.
Human beings matter to our common life regardless of whether they are seen as independent and productive members of society.
More pressing than the question of whether women can be ordained to the priesthood is the reality that clericalism and sexism have created and sustained a system in which women are treated as second-class citizens.
While at the surface the question about women’s ordination has been asked and answered, rarely has it been asked in this new context where women’s full human dignity is unreservedly affirmed and defended.