While St. Ephrem of Syria did not explicitly call for ordination of women to the diaconate, he envisioned radical equality between the sexes in ministry.
Francis’s post-synodal exhortation ‘Querida Amazonia’ is unique in more ways than one. It throws his one major structural reform into considerable turmoil.
What matters at the Amazon synod is not the imperative of universal consistency across all regions of the church, but the pastoral welfare of the People of God.
