Women can vote for first time at key meeting for Catholics, pope rules

Women will be allowed to vote at a key meeting for Catholics, the Synod of Bishops, for the first time in October after a decision by Pope Francis.

The pope’s changes were announced Wednesday through the Vatican’s news website. They represent a “significant crack in the stained glass ceiling,” Kate McElwee, executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC), said in a news release.

There will be 70 non-bishops appointed by the pope with voting rights at the October assembly. They will be drawn from priests, consecrated women, deacons, and faithful Catholics who do not have an ordained position within the church hierarchy. Half will be women, with young people also represented.

Maeve Louise Heaney, Xavier chair of theological formation at the Australian Catholic University, said in a phone interview that it was a “logical step forward” for the synod.

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“We all know that it is different when you have only a bunch of men, or only a bunch of women, to when you have diversity in a room,” she added. “When you have diversity in the room, the conversation shifts.”

Women cannot be ordained as deacons, priests or bishops in the Catholic Church.

At October’s synod, there will be 370 voting participants at the assembly, of which about one-fifth will be non-bishops and one-tenth will be women. The synod functions as an important advisory body to the pope, who holds the ultimate decision-making power within the Vatican.

“The church will be more complete, and it will be a joy to have her represented in her entirety in Rome,” Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Secretariat for the Synod, and Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the Synod’s general relator, said in the Vatican’s announcement.

Heaney said there would probably be strong — and opposing — reactions to the pope’s decision from conservative and liberal Catholics. “You can get all kinds of reactions when a decision is made to give women more of a voice,” she said.

“The one thing I hope in my heart is that we are capable of welcoming this intelligently,” she added, “and not allowing our individual fears to overtake what is simply a step to listen more broadly to membership of the church.”

At October’s assembly, there will also be five women and five men who are non-bishops elected by their respective bodies representing Catholic leaders called superiors general.

“This is not a revolution but an important change,” said Grech and Hollerich, the cardinals.

WOC members demonstrated outside St. Peter’s Square in 2018, calling for women’s voting rights at synods, McElwee said.