Pope's meeting on church future says it's 'urgent' to guarantee governance roles for women

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis’ big gathering of Catholic bishops and laypeople said Saturday it's “urgent” to guarantee fuller participation of women in church governance and called for research on allowing women to be deacons to be released within a year.

After a month of closed-door debate, Francis’ meeting on the future of the Catholic Church ended with the approval of a 42-page text on a host of issues that will now be considered at a second session next year.

Each paragraph passed with the necessary two-thirds majority, but the ones involving women and priestly celibacy obtained the most “no” votes. Nevertheless organizers hailed the voting as a success since none of the paragraphs failed to pass.

Organizers and participants alike had tried to temper expectations for any big changes to emerge, especially on hot-button doctrinal issues such as the church’s views on homosexuality. They have insisted that the mere process of forcing bishops to sit down at round tables to listen to ordinary Catholics for a month was the important novelty of the gathering.

But there was no denying that Francis’ big Synod on Synodality, as the meeting is called, and the two-year canvassing of rank-and-file Catholics that preceded it, has indeed generated expectations.

Progressives have hoped the gathering would send a message that the church would be more welcoming of LGBTQ+ people and offer women more leadership roles in a hierarchy where they are barred from ordination. Conservatives have emphasized the need to stay true to the 2,000-year tradition of the church and warned that opening debate on such issues was a “Pandora’s Box” that risked schism.

Another session is planned for next October, with final recommendations or conclusions from that meeting presented to Francis for his...