When Pope Francis met members of the International Theological Commission last November, he wasted no time telling them what was on his mind.
“There’s something I don’t like about you, excuse my frankness,” he said as he entered the small lounge adjacent to the Paul VI Audience Hall. “One, two, three, four women – poor women! They are alone! Ah, sorry, five,” the pope said. “On this point, we must move forward! Women have a capacity for theological reflection different from that of men,” Francis insisted, as he began to address the theologians.
He could obviously sees the perplexed look on their faces, so he drove home the point. “You will wonder, where does this discourse lead? Not only to tell you that you need more women here – that’s one thing – but also to help you reflect. The Church as woman, the Church as a bride. And this is a task that I ask of you, please. Demasculinize the Church,” the elderly pope said.
With this task in mind, Francis then initiated reflection on the “feminine character” of the Church during meeting a week later (December 4) with his nine top advisors who make up the Council of Cardinals. He even invited three theologians who specialize in the role of women in the Church to come and speak to the C9, as the council is commonly called.
The pope has put two concepts that the late Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) developed in the 1940s at the center of the reflections on women in the Church: the Petrine principle and the Marian principle. The former, referring to Saint Peter, the first of the Apostles, is linked to ministries in the Church. The latter is linked to the Virgin Mary.
“The pope wanted the question to be addressed from various perspectives,” said Linda Pocher, a Salesian sister and theologian who specializes in the Balthasar’s thought who was one of three scholars invited to address the C9.

“We are witnessing the beginning of an implosion of the Moscow Patriarchate, even in countries historically linked to the Russian Orthodox Church,” says Antoine Nivière, author and professor of Russian history, religion, and culture at the University of Lorraine (France).
He says this is largely due to Patriarch Kirill’s staunch support of Vladimir Putin and the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Since the start of the war in Ukraine, despite the iron grip he maintains on his clergy in Russia, Kirill is losing ground across the board,” Nivière claims. “Could this lead to the emergence of new Orthodox Churches completely emancipated from Moscow in Eastern Europe? It’s hard to say at the moment, as the process is just beginning,” he adds.
Antoine Nivière said: “We are witnessing the be-ginning of an implosion of the Moscow Patriarchate, even in countries historically linked to the Russian Church. The bishops of Ukraine, who remained obedient to Moscow until 2022, have proclaimed their independence. The Church in Latvia has also done so, while the diocese of Lithuania wavers, as does Estonia’s.”
Kirill’s “authority is eroding, even as he displays loyalty and fidelity to their power.
Since becoming Patriarch in 2019, Kirill has supported ultra-nationalist and anti-Western positions. He is on the official line, so he probably won’t be sidelined, at least not immediately. But he risks leaving behind a greatly weakened and widely dis-credited Russian Church–both abroad and at home.”

In Pope Francis’s native Argentina, the usual financial challenges faced by the Catholic Church around the world are being compounded by a historic decision by the country’s bishops to reject the stipends the national government has been paying to Catholic clergy and seminarians since 1979.
The decision to stop accepting the stipends was made by the Argentine bishops’ conference in 2018, following decades of debate, and announced that the withdrawal was complete as of Dec. 31.
The decision to stop taking the stipends does not mean that the Church in Argentina has renounced all state support, as Catholic schools continue to receive state subsidies and various church-sponsored charitable and humanitarian programs, such as residences for recovering drug addicts, also continue to receive public support.
While the amount involved in this stipends was largely nominal, amounting to roughly $70 a month after being eroded by years of hyper-inflation without adjustments and contributing less than ten percent to the Church’s annual budget, the symbolism of the payments nevertheless was always a source of controversy.
Sociologist Juan Cruz Esquivel, an expert in the relations between church and state in Argentina, said it was the late Archbishop Carmelo Giaquinta of Resistencia who first argued the bishops should renounce the stipend in 1996, and that momentum to do built gradually in the years since, with some prelates deciding to waive their personal payments even before the conference made a collective decision.
Father Maximo Jurcinovic, a communications official for the bishops’ conference in Argentina, said that most prelates in the country had used the stipends for pastoral purposes, such as transportation to church venues, rather than supplementing their own income. He said the decision to spurn those payments marks an important turning point for Argentine Catholicism.
“It’s about understanding that the Church must be funded by its own members,” he said.

Two Cambridge-led studies suggest that the psychological distress caused by lockdowns (UK) and experience of infection (US) was reduced among those of faith compared to non-religious people.
People of religious faith may have experienced lower levels of unhappiness and stress than secular people during the UK’s Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, according to a new University of Cambridge study released as a working paper.
The findings follow recently published Cambridge-led research suggesting that worsening mental health after experiencing Covid infection – either personally or in those close to you – was also somewhat ameliorated by religious belief. This study looked at the US population during early 2021.
University of Cambridge economists argue that – taken together – these studies show that religion may act as a bulwark against increased distress and reduced wellbeing during times of crisis, such as a global public health emergency.
“Selection biases make the wellbeing effects of religion difficult to study,” said Prof. Shaun Larcom from Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy, and co-author of the latest study. “People may become religious due to family backgrounds, innate traits, or to cope with new or existing struggles.”

One of the Catholic Church’s leading doctrinal officials has reiterated his unusual call for the global institution to consider ending its millennia-long requirement that priests remain celibate, saying that allowing priestly marriage could be a means of preventing clerics from living dangerous double lives.
In an exclusive interview with National Catholic Reporter on Jan. 24, Archbishop Charles Scicluna said: “One of my worries is that people are put in a situation where they are comfortable with a double life.”
“This is not to diminish the beauty of celibacy or the heroic commitment of people who have accepted celibacy as a gift and live it,” said the archbishop, speaking in an interview at the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for NCR’s “The Vatican Briefing” podcast. “But I think it is good that we discuss it.”
Earlier this month, Scicluna – who serves as both the Arch-bishop of Malta and an adjunct secretary of the Vatican dicastery – made headlines when he said he believes it is time to revisit the church’s long-standing ban on allowing marriage for most of its clerics. At the time, the arch-bishop was commenting on the lives of priests who have hidden relationships, which he said could be a “symptom” of priests “having to cope with” their celibacy requirement.

Italian theologian and religious Linda Pocher has con-firmed that Pope Francis is in favour of the diaconate of wo-men. As reported by the Spanish portal “Religion Digital” (Friday), the Pope is “very much in favour of the diaconate for women”, according to the Don Bosco sister, who teaches Christology and Mariology in Rome. The Vatican is currently trying to understand how the diaconate of women can be put into practice.
At the request of Pope Francis, the Italian theologian organised a discussion on the role of women at the most recent meeting of the Council of Cardinals from 5 to 7 February. One of the participants was the Anglican bishop Jo Bailey Wells, who was invited to present the Anglican Church’s experiences with the ordination of women. Among other things, the meeting focussed on “possible ministries for women in the Catholic Church”, but also on “possibilities that are already possible in the Church”.
Extending rights to all baptised persons
The bishop described to the cardinals and the Pope how the Church of England came to the decision to allow the ordination of women and how the life of the Church has changed as a result. Pocher, who had already attended the previous meeting of the Council of Cardinals in December, explained that the head of the Church wanted to rethink and reorganise the relationship between the sacramental priesthood and the priesthood of all the faithful “by extending some rights that until recently were reserved to bishops, priests and religious to all the baptised”.

Katalin Novák resigned as president of Hungary on February 10 amid protests over her decision to pardon a man last year who had been convicted of hiding a string of child sexual abuses in a state-run children’s home.
“I issued a pardon that caused bewilderment and unrest for many people,” Novák said in a television address to the nation Feb. 10. “I made a mistake.”
A close ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Novák, 46, who is a Calvinist Protestant, has been a champion for many in the Catholic Church worldwide because of her strong support for pro-life, pro-family policies. A mother of three, she was the first female president in Hungary’s history and the youngest person to ever hold the office.
Her unexpected resignation deals a major blow to Hungary’s nationalist governing party Fidesz, which since 2010 has ruled with a constitutional majority. Katalin Novák resigned as president of Hungary on Saturday amid protests over her decision to pardon a man last year who had been convicted of hiding a string of child sexual abuses in a state-run children’s home.
“I issued a pardon that caused bewilderment and unrest for many people,” Novák said in a television address to the nation February 10. “I made a mistake.”

A group of 90 Catholic clergy-men, scholars and authors have published a joint letter to “all Cardinals and Bishops of the Catholic Church,” urging them to oppose a Vatican document approved by Pope Francis that allows priests to bless same-sex unions for the first time.
In the letter, the Catholic conservatives say that Fiducia Supplicans, a Vatican doctrine released on December 18 and signed by the Pope, would lead to the blessing of “objectively sinful” relationships. They add that the cardinals and bishops should “forbid immediately the application of this document in your diocese” and “ask directly the Pope to urgently withdraw this unfortunate document, which is in contradiction with both Scripture and the universal and un-interrupted Tradition of the Church.”
The Fiducia Supplicans permits the blessing of those couples not considered to be married, according to the Catholic Church, including those that are same sex. This has proven deeply controversial within the global church, winning praise from reformers, while infuriating conservatives and being openly opposed by the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar.
Those who have signed the open letter include Gil Bailie, a member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars; Dr. Regis Martin, a professor of theology at Franciscan University Steubenville; and Rev. Robert Sirico, president of the Catholic St. John Henry Newman Institute in Michigan.
The letter was published by LifeSiteNews.com, a media out-let dedicated to promoting “the great importance to society of traditional Judeo-Christian moral principles,” and signed by its editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen. The website also hosts a public petition signed urging bishops to “prohibit the ‘blessing’ of sinful unions in your diocese,” which has received over 21,000 signatories.

An African cardinal who recently led the continent’s bishops in rejecting blessings for same-sex couples has now lashed out at the timing of the Vatican document that opened the door to such a move, calling it “damaging” to the synodal process convened by Pope Francis.
Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Kinshasa in the Democratic Re-public of Congo said that because the Dec. 18 release of Fiducia Supplicans, which authorized non-liturgical blessings of the persons involved in same-sex relation-ships, came between the two Synods of Bishops on Synodality, it created the misleading notion that the document was the fruit of synodal discussions.
“The timing, the moment when this document was publi-shed, was damaging for the synodal process,” Ambongo said Jan. 25.
The 64-year-old Ambongo, who also serves as president of the Symposium of Episcopal Con-ferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), said the timing of the document’s release “brought discredit to the synod, to synodality.”
Ambongo’s comments came in a press conference during a Jan. 24-26 joint meeting between representatives of SECAM and the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) held in Nairobi, Kenya.

Pope Francis met with members of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on February 8 morning to discuss the importance of liturgical re-form as a core feature of the broader “renewal of the Church.”
The address comes as the dicastery is meeting for its annual plenary assembly, which is addressing the “liturgical for-mation from Sacrosanctum Con-cilium to Desiderio Desideravi” for ordained ministers as well as “liturgical training courses for the people of God.”
The meeting will also seek to “provide bishops with practical suggestions for developing pastoral projects in their dioceses with the aim of putting into practice the reflections of the papal document,” a Feb. 5 press release from the dicastery stated.
Recalling that it has been 60 years since the promulgation of the Second Vatican Council’s seminal document on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, the pope stressed in his Feb. 8 address that liturgical reform underscored the council fathers’ objective of renewing the Church’s “fundamental dimensions” such as “spiritual, pastoral, ecumenical, and missionary” work.
“Without liturgical reform there is no reform of the Church,” the pope said.