Vatican City, 08 October 2020 (VIS)
In his prayer intention for October 2020, Pope Francis asks everyone to pray that women be given greater leadership roles in the Church.
Over his pontificate, Pope Francis has made many gestures to give momentum to this desire to give women greater weight in the Church. The Pope’s Evangelii gaudium reads:
“Demands that the legitimate rights of women be respected, based on the firm conviction that men and women are equal in dignity, present the Church with profound and challenging questions which cannot be lightly evaded” (104).
He also points out that “by virtue of Baptism, we are all called to faithfully proclaim and serve the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to be missionary disciples of the Lord. Nonetheless, among the lay faithful, women have been consciously and unconsciously relegated to an inferior level. As Francis reminded us in Querida Amazonia, many women, moved by the Holy Spirit, keep the Church alive in many parts of the world with remarkable devotion and deep faith. It’s essential that they participate more and more in areas where decisions are made. This requires a profound change of mentality; it requires our conversion, which implies prayer.”
