Women’s voices and votes loom large as pope is to open a Vatican meeting on

A few years ago, Pope Francis told the head of the main Vatican-backed Catholic women’s organization to be “brave” in pushing for change for women in the Catholic Church.
Maria Lia Zervino took his advice and in 2021 wrote Francis a letter, then made it public, saying flat out that the Catholic Church owed a big debt to half of humanity and that women deserved to be at the table where church decisions are made, not as mere “ornaments” but as protagonists.
Francis appears to have taken note, and this week he will open a global gathering of Catholic bishops and laypeople discussing the future of the church, where women – their voices and their votes – are taking center stage for the first time.
For Zervino, who worked alongside the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio when both held positions in the Argentine bishops’ conference, the gathering is a watershed moment for the church and quite possibly the most consequential thing Francis will have undertaken as pope.
Women have long complained they are treated as second-class citizens in the church, barred from the priesthood and highest ranks of power yet responsible for the lion’s share of church work – teaching in Catholic schools, running Catholic hospitals and passing the faith down to next generations.