“Pope Francis Allows Women to Vote in Bishops Assembly for the First Time”

Pope Francis will allow women to participate in a council of bishops as voting members for the first time this year in his latest move to increase the presence of women in leadership roles in the Catholic Church, according to the Pope.Wall Street Journal.

The Vatican said on Wednesday that the next meeting of the Synod of Bishops, scheduled for October in the Vatican, will have at least 40 female voters, including members of religious orders as well as lay women.

The synod, which is expected to address controversial issues including the ordination of women, contraception and the role of gay people in the Church, is an advisory body to Pope Francis and cannot make binding decisions on its own.

The bishops, who are all male, will still make up more than 75% of the assembly after the changes announced. However, the inclusion of female voters is a milestone in the pope’s policy of giving women a more prominent role in church leadership, the paper says.

The pope ruled out the ordination of women as priests or bishops, and refused to act on the recommendation of bishops at a synod in 2019 to allow women to be ordained as deacons, a lower rank than clergy.

But he promised to “create broader opportunities for a more visible female presence in the Church,” including “the potential role of women in decision-making in various areas of the life of the Church.”

The pope appointed the first female director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Gatta, and made Sister Raffaella Petrini the first woman to hold the position of second-highest official in the administration of Vatican City, the pope’s sovereign territory within Rome.

More than a third of the members of the Economics Council, which oversees the Vatican’s finances, are women.

Last year, he appointed three nuns, appointing women to the body that advises the pope on the appointment of bishops.

Sister Nathalie Picart, who was appointed by the Pope as the first female secretary of the Synod in 2021, will also be able to vote in the October meeting.

A statement from the Synod’s office Tuesday said the inclusion of women and other non-bishops as voters would not dilute the synod’s identity as an assembly of bishops.