The Vatican recently released two important documents concerning the status of women in Church leadership. First, a letter by the president of Pope Francis’s Second Commission on women deacons came out on December 4, 2025, reporting its members’ divided-but-negative opinion regarding ordaining women to the diaconate. Then, Study Group 5’s Final Report, released on March 5, 2026, explored nonordained leadership roles for women. These questions are hardly settled. We can expect continued synodal discussion on the place and status of women in the Church, leading up to the Ecclesial Assembly scheduled to convene in Rome in October 2028.
The biggest question now is what Pope Leo will do before, during, and after the Ecclesial Assembly. His decisions will affect not only the question of women in the diaconate, but also women in lay ministerial roles, and as both instructors and formators in seminaries. What might we expect in terms of possible trajectories?
First, we need to consider the history of discussions thus far. The second and final commission established by Pope Francis followed five previous commissions to study the question, beginning in 1973 with Pope Paul VI’s Commission on the Role of Women in Society and in the Church (1973–5), and followed by three quinquennia of the International Theological Commission: the first (1969–74), the fifth (1992–7), and the sixth (1997-2002), and the initial Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women (2016–8).
Francis’s Second Commission met in Rome three times, in September 2021, July 2022, and February 2025. The Second Commission president’s letter was published solely in Italian and presented undocumented opinions resulting from selected tallies of votes from the commission’s three meetings, each attended by a different panel of individuals, named and unnamed. While ten people were initially appointed, one commissioner missed the first two meetings and was replaced with an unnamed person; two commissioners missed the second meeting due to illness; and the replaced commissioner returned to the third meeting following the death of an original commissioner.
Study Group 5, on “The Participation of Women in the Life and Leadership of the Church,” was established in the interim between the October 2023 and October 2024 Synod assemblies in Rome. Months after the Second Commission’s letter appeared, the final report of the unnamed members of Study Group 5 stated that the review of materials sent to it and to the Synod office on the question of women deacons was referred to the Second Commission. In retrospect, Study Group 5’s report, presented by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, could be a result of Pope Francis’s July 2013 request, later oft repeated, for a “theology of the woman.” In any event, Study Group 5 did not address the question of women deacons, except to state that:
The question of women’s access to the diaconate did not yet appear sufficiently mature, all things considered and as maintained by Pope Francis himself; yet the opportunity remained open to continue the work of deeper study on the role of women in the leadership of communities and on other possible avenues of participation.
Study Group 5 recognized the work of the Second Commission and referenced the Second Commission’s recommendations regarding Pope Francis’s Spiritus Domini (on Lector and Acolyte), Antiquum ministerium (on Catechists), and confirming John Paul II’s Ordinatio sacerdotalis, which affirmed the ban on women priests, stating that the Church did not have the authority to ordain women as priests.
No decision on restoring women to the ordained diaconate is likely to be made prior to the October 2028 Ecclesial Assembly scheduled in Rome. The Synod office has issued a document entitled “Pathways for the Implementation Phase of the Synod (2025-2028),” which opens with words spoken by Pope Leo during his first public address, from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on the day of his election, May 8, 2025:
We are a missionary Church, a Church that builds bridges and encourages dialogue, a Church ever open to welcoming, like this Square with its open arms, all those who are in need of our charity, our presence, our readiness to dialogue and our love.
At its outset, the implementation document states that the synodal Church “is at the service of its mission, and any change in the life of the Church is intended to make it more capable for proclaiming the Kingdom of God and witnessing to the Gospel.” These words are important, especially if we recall Pope Francis’s comments about the “synodal style” at the end of the October 2024 Synod Assembly:
This is not the classic way of putting decisions off forever. It is what corresponds to the synodal style with which the Petrine ministry, too, is to be exercised: listen, convene, discern, decide, and evaluate. Pauses, silence, and prayer are necessary at every one of these steps.
For readers who think the question of restoring women to the ordained diaconate has lingered a little too long, recall that the question is not now, and never really has been, whether women can be ordained as deacons. The question is whether they should be so ordained. Would the Church be more capable of proclaiming the Kingdom of God and witnessing to the Gospel if it included women in the ordained ministry of deacon?
The single published study by the International Theological Commission, in 2002, as well as the September 2025 letter by Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi on behalf of the second commission, each affirms that the question is up to the Magisterium to decide. There is no doctrine banning the ordination of women as deacons, and if there were any possibility of such, the pope supremely capable of promulgating such a restriction was Benedict XVI. As the most senior woman official in the Curia told me thirty years ago, they can’t say “no,” they just don’t want to say “yes.”
Since the Synod’s inception, multiple synodal meetings and assemblies have asked for the restoration of women to the ordained diaconate. The problem is how to get from here to there. That is what the implementation phase is about. Events during the first half of 2027, from January to June, will be dedicated to “remembering”: to recollecting and reconsidering the implementation of the documents and experiences from the Synod’s Final Document. The second half of 2027 is meant to “interpret.” National or regional Assemblies of Bishops’ Conferences are asked to prepare a theological-pastoral report and a letter addressed to the other local Churches. From January through April 2028, continental assemblies are asked to prepare what the Vatican terms a “forward-looking report capable of identifying shared priorities and orientations.” Finally, the October 2028 assembly in Rome is to “celebrate”—but it is presented as a time of evaluation, synthesis, and a “renewed impetus for the Church’s synodal conversion.”
The topic of women in ordained ministry has been met with measured acceptance and some significant resistance during the past few years. Those who understand the genuine distinction between the diaconate and priesthood are supportive, while those in cultures that do not fully recognize the value and dignity of women are not. In the meantime, we must ask: What can contribute to the acceptance of women ordained as deacons? What will the future bring?
As a response to the 2019 Amazon Synod of Bishops, during which some two-thirds of the language groups reportedly approved of women deacons, Pope Francis presented two distinct responses: immediately, he said he would recall the 2016–8 commission on women deacons, perhaps adding two or three new members, although he later (in April 2020) named an entirely new panel for the Second Commission; then in January 2021, he opened the installed lay ministries of Lector and Acolyte to laypeople not on the path toward ordination, and in May 2021 also established the installed lay ministry of Catechist.
In his 2021 Apostolic Letter, Spiritus Domini, Pope Francis modified Can. 230 §1, opening the installed ministries of Lector and Acolyte to all “suitable faithful,” recognizing that those ministries, distinct from the sacrament of Holy Orders, are based on our common baptism. The ministries had previously been restricted to men, typically those preparing for ordination. Francis’s later Apostolic Letter Antiquum ministerium (2021) restored the ancient ministry of Catechist as an installed ministry open to all persons.
Those are significant changes in Church practices. Yes, women, both secular and religious, have long served as lectors, even acolytes, during liturgical ceremonies, and especially during Mass. And women have most certainly been at the forefront of the lay ministry previously understood as “catechist,” managing and teaching in religious-education programs.
But to be formally installed as a Lector or Acolyte raises several points: first, installation to and ministry within each of these lay ministries is required before diaconal ordination; second, rubrics generally call for adults serving in these ministries—at least as an Acolyte—to wear an alb and to remain within the sanctuary throughout the Mass. For the Church—the people of God—to become acclimated to seeing women in these roles, to which they have been formally installed, can begin to soften, even change, cultural biases against women being near the sacred.
The installed lay ministry of Catechist raises a more interesting prospect. The installed Catechist is proposed to be more than a teacher of religious instruction and is to be understood as a trained and educated witness to the Gospel. Canon Law states that only ordained persons may preach the homily; the General Instruction for the Roman Missal, the liturgical law of the Church, restricts that privilege to clerics participating in the liturgy, even if unable to concelebrate. Even so, it is common in many territories for an ordained person—the visiting missionary priest, for example—to come to the ambo from the sacristy to preach, and then to disappear, often to reappear at the back of the church following the celebration. Could that practice present an opening for lay preachers, assuming their bishops have given them faculties? Installed lay Catechists would be educated and trained under the auspices of diocesan bishops. Could liturgical law be changed to allow installed lay Catechists to preach at Mass?
The Synod’s Study Group 4, initially proposed to include an evaluation of the diaconate, gave the strongest support for the distinction between the deacon and priest by essentially eliminating consideration of the diaconate in its final report. The report presents the hope for:
a broad and real participation of all members of the People of God in the formation of future pastors, with particular attention to the contribution of women and families; to foster the acquisition of skills indispensable for a synodal Church, such as listening, dialogue, co-responsibility and ecclesial discernment; and to educate for a more open correspondence to the missionary mandate of Jesus.
It specifically recommends “a participatory and synodal style” be incorporated for priestly formation. In fact, the document uses the term “synodal” ninety-nine times and “synod” twenty-seven times.
Will the formation ministry for future deacons and priests include women? In the best of all possible worlds, women would be included in the process from the very start. Study Group 4 noted that entities around the world questioned the methodology for accepting candidates for the priesthood. At present, priest candidates are usually required to have a priest as a spiritual director, and in most countries, most seminary professors and administrators are priests.
We must admit that a culture of clericalism infects every country in the world. Would it not make sense to include women in the selection process, as well as members of the faculty or administration eligible to vote on whether a candidate in studies should be invited to consider another vocation, as well as to vote on whether to present a candidate for diaconal and/or priestly ordination? And, what about women spiritual directors?
What will Pope Leo do? What can he do? Already, there is resistance to installing laypeople (especially women) not destined for ordination in the lay ministries of Lector and Acolyte, and the ministry of Catechist seems presently undefined. Since 2021, two U.S. dioceses have begun installing women: San Antonio began installing lay women and men as Lectors and Acolytes in 2022, and later, Lexington began installing only Acolytes. A few other U.S. dioceses (St. Louis and Galveston-Houston) install only men as Lectors or Acolytes.
A task force to develop a national directory on the instituted ministries of Lector, Acolyte, and Catechist was established by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2024, headed by Auxiliary Bishop Michael G. Woost of Cleveland, professor of sacramental and liturgical theology at St. Mary Seminary in Ohio and diocesan vicar general. The task force met six times in 2025 and made an initial presentation at the November USCCB meeting in Baltimore. The development of the directory was not on the agenda for the June 2026 meeting in Orlando, Florida. The task force continues to meet to confirm the outline of a document and may present a draft at the USCCB November 2026 meeting. One can only hope that the directory will be completed before the October 2028 Ecclesial Assembly in Rome.
The question at hand is the Synod and women. We know what has happened. We know what is happening now. We can only hope that the future will bring genuine synodal answers for the women of the Church.
This article is adapted from a paper delivered at the June 2026 meeting of the Catholic Theological Society of America in St. Louis, Missouri.
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