Pope Francis has firmly slammed the door on admitting women to holy orders on the grounds that women’s ordination constitutes a “theological problem” and a violation of the “Petrine principle.”
In an interview published Monday with left-wing Jesuit magazine America, the pontiff categorically stated that a woman “cannot enter ordained ministry … because the Petrine principle has no place for that.”
The pope was responding to a question that asked what he “would say to a woman who is already serving in the life of the Church but who still feels called to be a priest,” especially since “many women feel pain because they cannot be ordained priests.”
Francis stressed that focusing exclusively on “the ministerial dimension of the life of the Church” or the “Petrine principle” of the “ordained ministry” would be to “amputate the being of the Church.”
Instead, the “Marian principle, which is the principle of femininity in the Church, of the woman in the Church, where the Church sees a mirror of Herself because She is a woman and a spouse,” was “still more important” but sadly ignored, the pope explained.
“The ministerial dimension, we can say, is that of the Petrine Church. I am using a category of theologians,” Francis reiterated. “A church with only the Petrine principle would be a church that one would think is reduced to its ministerial dimension, nothing else.” Francis said the Church had failed “to develop a theology of woman that reflects” the “Marian principle, which is that of the spousal Church” and had neglected to explain through catechesis how a woman “looks more like the Church, which is mother and spouse.”