Does Pope Francis Have a Woman Problem?
The new pope is undoubtedly forward-thinking—except for when it comes to women ascending in the church hierarchy.
Pope Francis is undoubtedly a good guy. In his first nine months at the helm of the Catholic Church, he has managed to impress almost everyone. His human touch has earned him Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” honor; his shocking comment “If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?” when asked about gay priests even earned him Advocate magazine’s person of the year. He is even featured in caricature on this week’s New Yorker cover making a snow angel. But for all the papal cheerleading, there is still at least one demographic that won’t be lauding the great pontiff quite yet: women.
During an exclusive interview with La Stampa newspaper last week, the pope flatly ruled out the possibility of women ever ascending to any leadership position equal to men within the Catholic Church’s hierarchy. Ever. Answering Vatican expert Andrea Tornielli’s question about whether or not Francis’s Church would ever see female cardinals, the much-loved pontiff scoffed, “I don’t know where this idea sprang from. Women in the Church must be valued, not clericalized. Whoever thinks of women as cardinals suffers a bit from clericalism.”
This is not the first time Francis has seemingly dismissed women as equals, keeping in line with his predecessors’ views that women are somehow lesser creatures. In a September interview with a group of Jesuit magazines, including America, Francis said that it was necessary to expand opportunities for a stronger presence of women in the church, but he clearly doesn’t want them behind the altar. “I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of ‘female machismo,’ because a woman has a different make-up than a man. But what I hear about the role of women is often inspired by an ideology of machismo,” he said.