After CDF Prefect Luis Ladaria Ferrer SJ reaffirmed the impossibility of ordaining women in the Catholic Church, it has become clear that cardinal-elect Ladaria’s statements run counter to a position recently enunciated by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.
In an article in L’Osservatore Romano on 30 May, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated that expressing doubt about the impossibility of ordaining women to the priesthood “creates serious confusion among the faithful.”
Interviewed on the subject in his Easter interview for the Salzburger Nachrichten of 1 April 2018, Vienna archbishop Cardinal Schönborn referred specifically to the possibility of change via a Council. He stated that the question of women’s ordination was a question that “can certainly only be clarified at an [Ecumenical] Council. It cannot be solved by a Pope alone. It is far too important a question for it to be solved from the desk of a Pope.”
Asked whether he was only talking about ordination of women to the priesthood, he said he meant the ordination to the diaconate, the priesthood and the episcopate. He was then asked whether it was possible for Pope Francis alone to give the go-ahead for a women’s diaconate.
