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A monthlong meeting of Catholic bishops and lay people at the Vatican ended on Saturday with a call for women to be given more leadership roles in the church. But on the question of whether women could be ordained as deacons, the church said the possibility “remains open” and required further meditation.
Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, one of the top officials at the meeting, said at a news conference on Saturday night that allowing female deacons was a delicate issue, and that the meeting, known as a synod, had not deliberated for or against it.
“The question remains open,” he said, adding that the pope had signed the document approving the meeting’s findings. “Who am I to contradict the Holy Father?”
The issue of women’s roles in the Roman Catholic Church, which had emerged as a priority when Catholics around the globe were canvassed for opinions ahead of the meeting, was repeatedly discussed at the synod. But the question of female ordination had been taken off the table and relegated to a separate study group that will present its findings to Pope Francis next summer.
The final document, presented Saturday evening, said “there is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the church.” It also urged women to participate in the formation of priests in seminaries.
Each paragraph of the document required a two-thirds approval. The paragraph on women’s roles received the most no votes, but still passed, 258-97.
The document did not specifically address L.G.B.T.Q. inclusion, another priority that came up during the global canvassing. But one participant, the Rev. James Martin, an American Jesuit who ministers to the L.G.B.T.Q. community, said that compared with a year ago, when the first session of the synod was held, discussions had been much friendlier and “more open.” Francis told the assembly Saturday that the church had to be open to “all, all, all.”
The Vatican meeting was hailed as a major event, comparable to a mini-version of the Second Vatican Council that modernized the church in the 1960s, and reflected Francis’ desire to involve all Catholics — from cardinals to the faithful in the remotest parish — in frank discussions to chart the future of the church.
The question of the role of women has been hotly debated in an institution where they play an outsize role in its daily workings. They outnumber Catholic men toiling in hospitals and schools worldwide, and often serve as ministerial leaders in remote communities, but they have very little say where it counts, critics say.
Many of these women worldwide say their leadership is not always recognized.
There are so many examples “of leadership and the ministry of women that we’re already seeing all over the world,” said Ellie Hidalgo, a director of Discerning Deacons, an organization based in Durham, N.C., that advocates for female deacons.
In a push to make the church more inclusive, Pope Francis has appointed more women to top jobs at the Vatican than any of his predecessors. While Francis has made clear that female deacons are not on his agenda, saying in an interview in May that “women are of great service as women, not as ministers,” his approval of the document Saturday suggests the door has not been fully shut.
Deacons are ordained ministers who can preach and perform weddings, funerals and baptisms. But they cannot celebrate Mass.
For some, the increased leadership roles mentioned in Saturday’s document will not be enough.
“I think it will feel pretty insufficient to women, especially those called to ordained ministry,” Kate McElwee, the executive director of Women’s Ordination Conference, said on Friday. “It feels like they’re trying to open different opportunities and make room where they think it’s appropriate for women, but it will feel pretty insufficient if it doesn’t address the urgent need to recognize women as fully equal.”
The Vatican’s top doctrinal officer, Cardinal Victor Fernandez, explained this past week that Francis had decided the time was “not ripe” to weigh in on the question. On Thursday, the cardinal, who is overseeing the study group, told synod delegates that the question required more review, and that in any case, he believed it was not a priority for most women in the church.
He added, however, that the study group was open to receiving opinions and listening to experiences about the role of women, a step hailed by advocates for female ordination.
“Up until now, it’s mostly been a theological conversation or historical conversation,” Ms. Hidalgo, of Discerning Deacons, said on Friday. But “to actually take into account what’s happening on the ground and all the ways in which women’s leadership is being called forth by their communities and by priests and by bishops” could lead to real change, she added.
All month various groups have been staging events to raise awareness about women’s role in the church. A liberal group called We Are Church performed a short play at a religious house in Rome, condemning the “absurdity” of deliberating whether women should be given full equality. Ms. McElwee’s group held protest marches.
Others held events explicitly not approved by the church.
Ms. Brown, of the Women’s Ordination Conference, attended a ritual this month on the Tiber River in Rome at which the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, a group not recognized by the Vatican, conducted what it called an ordination of six women — three as deacons and three as priests.
For the Vatican, the event violated a code of canon law that prohibits the ordination of women. The women disagree, claiming apostolic succession from an Argentine bishop — whose credentials the Vatican has challenged — who claimed to have ordained seven women on the Danube in June 2002.
Two years later, another bishop whose identity has not been made public claimed to have ordained the first two female bishops. Since then, more that 270 people in 14 countries have undertaken the same ritual, said the Rev. Mary Bridget Meehan, who was ordained a bishop in the association in 2009 and performed the Tiber ceremony.
The decision to hold the event in the Italian capital was deliberate, she said.
“We’re doing a visible witness to say we support the synod, we are part of it, we’re part of the church,” she said. The pope “talks about having conversations in the spirit,” she added. “We’re ready. We’re here.”
Mary Catherine Daniels, one of the newly ordained, said she had suppressed a feeling that she was called to the priesthood for years because “I’ve always wanted to be an obedient daughter of the church, and I knew this was off limits.” But eventually, she said, she followed her heart because she believed it was God’s will.
Last year, Pope Francis gave Sister Linda Pocher, a theologian, carte blanche to organize a series of seminars about women and the church for the group of cardinals who serve as his advisers.
“I was given the freedom to open the windows to the room where they meet and offer some different perspectives,” Sister Pocher said this past week at the presentation of four books containing those seminars, each with a preface by the pope.
Sister Regina Da Costa, a Brazilian theologian who spoke at the presentation, expressed the frustration of many Catholic women who, she said, were “tired of not being listened to, tired of not being considered by the church” and tired of “being behind” the men in the church.
“We’d like to be side by side and move forward together,” she said.
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