Pope Francis has always said he supports ‘greater inclusion of women in top Vatican jobs’, however, this does not include allowing women to be priests,….or Bishops……or Archbishops……or Cardinals……and certainly not a Pope!
In 2018 Mary McAleese[former president of Ireland] was speaking in Rome ahead of the Voices of Faith conference, which features prominent Catholic women from around the world. They were celebrating International Women’s Day by asking for a greater say in the way the Catholic church is governed.
In previous years this Catholic women’s movement has celebrated International Women’s Day by meeting inside the Vatican, but this year their list of 2018 speakers did not meet with official approval. Senior Vatican officials took objection to the inclusion of a Ugandan woman who champions Lesbian and Gay Catholic rights in her country, where homosexuality is a crime. They also excluded Tina Beattie, an English Catholic professor of theology.
Pope Francis declined to attend their meeting or to celebrate Mass for those attending and the Vatican Radio censored its reports on their demand for gender equality.
“The Catholic Church is one of the last great bastions of misogyny,” said Mrs McAleese. “It’s an empire of misogyny. A Church hierarchy that is “homophobic and anti-abortion is not the Church of the future”, she added. “We don’t want to be what the Pope describes as ‘the strawberry on the cake’,
[Extracts from BBC News – 8th March 2018]