Pope Francis did more to elevate women than any other pope. Will his successor cement or narrow his reforms?

Australia Broadcast Center

23-04-2025

For centuries, it was believed that in the Middle Ages, a woman who was particularly astute and talented disguised herself as a man and rose through the ranks of the Catholic Church until she eventually became pope. For two years, it was said, Pope Joan led the church, until her gender was shockingly discovered during a procession and she was stoned to death.
This was spoken of from the 13th to the 16th century, when writers began to query the lack of evidence, though some historians claim to have now gathered some
While mounting a horse. Gave birth. Just popped out a baby, mid-air. Find me one woman who has ever given birth whilst hopping onto a horse and I'll tell you the name of the next pope.
I understand people's fascination with the story, though; so fierce and enduring has been the church's tamping down of any suggestion of full equality for the women in their midst. Nuns have been disciplined, sisters hushed, laity forbidden from speaking about women priests, for challenging the idea that because Jesus's apostles were male, all priests must always be.
Photo shows
Pope Francis acknowledges the crowd as he arrives for his Inauguration Mass on March 19, 2013 in Vatican City.
The leader of the Catholic Church Pope Francis has died. The Argentinian Jesuit oversaw one of the most tumultuous periods in the Church's modern history.
There's good reason women get impatient with the institutional church. A century or so after being granted the right to vote, several decades after they began occupying the highest political positions in the world — Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher — the pace of change in the Catholic Church remains, to an outside eye, glacial.
With the passing of the widely admired Pope Francis, and the soon-to-be-seen spectre of 130-odd men dressed in scarlet robes gathering to vote for their next leader, we are reminded yet again of the complete absence of women in the upper echelons of the church, in rooms where decisions are made that will impact even the most intimate parts of their lives. This is despite the fact that Francis did more to elevate women than any other pope, often angering traditionalists in his ranks by doing so.
As a cardinal, he had washed the feet of a young mother in a maternity hospital. As pope, he washed the feet of two women in a juvenile detention centre, one of them a Muslim. This practice is a holy ceremony based on Jesus washing the feet of his disciples; for 200 years the Pope had only washed the feet of men. To include women was quietly radical and startled conservatives.
He also
Why won't the church rethink the place of women?
Importantly, Francis appointed more women to influential positions in the Vatican than any of his predecessors. Earlier this year, he made a religious sister the head of a department and appointed the first female president of the Vatican City State's government. He included women in the world 2024 Synod, and 57 had voting rights. He refused, though, to talk about the possibility of women in the priesthood, and has repeatedly blocked the ordination of women deacons, saying "not now".
Amongst Catholic intellectuals, the debate about women has centred on the diaconate — it remains frowned upon to even discuss women being made priests (John Paul II actually forbade any mention of it). Deacons, whilst on the lowest rungs of clergy, are the entry point to clerical status, and would implicitly possess some decision-making ability.
In the Catholic tradition, jurisdiction is the authority granted to individuals to govern or lead within the church. To lead, you most usually need to have been ordained — with a few exceptions of abbesses in the Middle Ages, and the early church female diaconate.
All the while, a growing number of people in the pews have been wondering why a church with thinning clerical ranks won't rethink the place of women. In
Nuns attend a rosary for Pope Francis at the Vatican following his death.
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Reuters: Guglielmo Mangiapane
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More specifically, in 2024, a Pew Research Center
Not long after Francis was elected, the Pontifical Council for Culture's annual assembly
In 2021, a worldwide listening session on the future of the church instituted by Francis and called Synod on Synodality began. In February this year, the National Catholic Reporter
Many have questioned whether the presence of more women higher up in the church could have punctured cultures of impunity when it came to child abuse years ago. But Francis has insisted: "The fact that the woman does not access ministerial life is not a deprivation because her place is much more important."
But Francis also admired what he called "feminine genius", even if he caused some
The Vatican remains overwhelmingly male
When asked to explain opposition to women becoming priests, he often cited two principles: the "Marian", which means that women, like Mary, are meant to serve the church in a motherly role, and the "Petrine" which means that men, like Peter the Apostle, are given the duty of ordained institutional leadership.
He was also seeking to de-clericalise the church and to decentralise authority. He devised a way to usher in more women by allowing people who were not priests to have more senior roles. At the local level, he allowed women to become
Photo shows
Pope Francis grinning while wearing white robes and a silver Catholic cross chain and waving with his left hand
Speculation is swirling about who could be the new leader of the Catholic church. But the secretive nature of papal elections means it's hard to pick a single frontrunner.
In 2022, he reformed the Roman Curia's constitution, formally separating the power of governance in the Vatican from sacramental power (the power bestowed on a man by holy orders). In other words, this separated administrative work from priestly work, which enabled him logically to appoint women to functional roles previously only held by male cardinals and bishops, whilst refusing to contemplate a woman might ever have the sacramental power of a cardinal or bishop, let alone deacon or priest.
Francis openly praised women's efficiency in government and finance. In 2010, women formed 17 per cent of Vatican employees, and
Still, the Vatican remains overwhelmingly male, and feminists shrugged off these changes as marginal, pointing to the fact that women are still locked out of rooms where the most important decisions are made.
As Benedictine nun and high profile author Joan Chittister wrote in a
Pope Francis touches an icon of the Virgin Mary after reciting the holy rosary at the St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome in May 2013.
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AP: Gregorio Borgia
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"The call for women in official positions at higher echelons in the church is promised — but ignored," Chittister wrote. "Women have nothing to do with the theological commissions where decisions are made that affect the spiritual lives of their half of the church." They have nothing to do with the choice of the next pope, or the core decisions about marriage, contraception, divorce, sexuality, abortion — about what it means to live in a woman's body.
Many millions are grieving the loss of the much-loved pope who worked until his last moments, who lived humbly and eschewed the trappings of high office, who continued to serve when infirm and in pain, who spent his final days addressing the faithful at Easter, calling for the ceasing of war in the Middle East, and meeting with the American vice president, a man whose immigration policies he had been sharply critical of. (In an open letter to American bishops, Francis
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Here lies the rub
Pope Francis steered the church away from a focus on sin to a focus on suffering, and whilst many conservatives protested what they saw as his liberalism, he softened the image of the church, and tried to portray it a place of healing, tenderness and understanding.
He powerfully described the church as a field hospital, a place where the wounded should be bound, the sick cared for, the migrants housed, the lost embraced and the marginalised heard, before any other matters be addressed.
But
The truth is that women are the poorest of the poor. Men have paid jobs; few women in the world do. Men have clear civil, legal and religious rights in marriage; few women in the world do. Men take education for granted; few women in the world can expect the same. Men are allowed positions of power and authority outside the home; few women in the world can hope for the same. Men have the right to ownership and property; most of the women of the world are denied these things by law, by custom, by religious tradition. Women are owned, beaten, raped and enslaved regularly simply because they are female. And worst of all, perhaps, they are ignored — rejected — as full human beings, as genuine disciples, by their churches, including our own.
Our own
— here lies the rub. Recent revelations of poor treatment of women inside the church caused considerable alarm — and resentment.
In 2019, historian Lucetta
Lucetta Scaraffia quit her job as editor-in-chief of Women Church World in 2019.
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AP: Domenico Stinellis
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This is not entirely fair — in 2021 sociologist Maria Lia Zervino
The next year, Francis promoted her, electing her as a member of the Vatican's
And, as
The question today for those who wish women to exercise their full talents in the church is whether Francis's successor will continue, cement or narrow his reforms. The likes of Chittister and Zervino will be watching carefully.
For now, any suggestion that there could be a scenario whereby, scandalously, someone other than a man could become pope, will need to turn to fictional Hollywood films such as Conclave, or dust off the myths of history.
Juila Baird is an author, broadcaster, journalist and co-host of the
.