By Joshua McElwee
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – One of the most long-lasting impacts of Pope Francis’ pontificate may be his appointment of more women than ever before to top Vatican positions.
From hospital as he was battling double pneumonia in February 2025, the pope appointed Sister Raffaella Petrini to a role akin to governor of Vatican City, a first.
Weeks before that, he named Sister Simona Brambilla as the first woman to lead a major Vatican department, asking her to oversee the world’s Catholic religious orders.
But Francis, who was elected pope in 2013 and died on Monday aged 88, also disappointed some advocates for greater roles for women in the wider Church by putting off the question of allowing women to be ordained as clergy.
Although he created two commissions to consider whether women could serve as deacons, who, like priests, are ordained, but cannot celebrate Mass, he did not move forward on the issue. He also frequently reaffirmed Pope John Paul II’s 1994 ban on women priests.
“Pope Francis’ legacy on the place of women in the Church … is complex,” said Anna Rowlands, a British academic and occasional Vatican adviser.
“He did more than any other pontiff to ensure that women are included in greater numbers and higher positions of authority,” said Rowlands, a professor at Durham University. “Yet, most of that change was precisely within existing parameters, flexing the system (only) a little.”
Paola Lazzarini, an Italian church reform advocate, called Francis “the first pope to be fully aware that the Church suffers from a glaring and profoundly unjust imbalance” between men and women.
“(But) his way of responding to this injustice was to make appointments on an individual basis and establish commissions that went on forever and led to nothing,” she said.
The pope’s first commission on women deacons, from 2016 to 2019, was tasked with studying whether women had been ordained as deacons in the early centuries of the Church, as mentioned in the Bible.
The group produced a report for the Vatican, which was never released publicly. Francis said the commission was not able to find agreement on the issue, an assertion some of its members have since contested.
A second commission was instituted in 2020 but never concluded its work.
VATICAN ROLES
Francis prioritised appointing women to top Vatican roles. He made Barbara Jatta the first woman director of the Vatican Museums in 2016.
In 2021, he appointed Sister Nathalie Becquart as co-undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, which prepares major summits of the world’s Catholic bishops every few years.
In 2022, Francis made Sister Alessandra Smerilli the number two official in the Vatican’s development office, which deals with peace and justice issues.
The pope also made two women part of a previously all-male committee that helps select the world’s bishops. “This way, things are opening up a bit,” he told Reuters in 2022.
Rowlands said Francis “tried to model a message of ‘so much is possible that we are not yet doing'” in terms of appointing women to senior Church roles.
Francis did give women a vote for the first time at synod summit meetings, which discuss major issues facing the global Church. He expanded the synod to include women as full members. In October 2024, there were nearly 60 women joining around 300 cardinals, bishops and priests.
Phyllis Zagano, an academic at Hofstra University in New York state and part of the pope’s first deacons commission, said: “Francis brought the conversation about women in the Church to a new level, and we can only hope that his efforts to teach the world the value of every person will bear fruit in these troubled times.”
Catherine Clifford, a Canadian academic who helped draft the final text of the 2024 synod assembly, said the pope’s changes to the synod “created a space for the voice of women to be truly heard”.
“This has led to the broad recognition of the urgent need to include the participation of women in … decision-making at every level of the Church,” said Clifford, a professor at Saint Paul University in Ottawa.
OUTDATED COMMENTS
Francis did sometimes make comments about women that appeared outdated.
He was criticised in September 2024 during a trip to Belgium, when he described women as having “a fertile welcome, care (and) vital devotion”. The Catholic university where he spoke issued a press release expressing its “incomprehension and disapproval”.
The pope defended his choice not to have women clergy by saying he was afraid of creating a kind of “masculinity in a skirt”.
“(He) seemed to struggle to find language, and indeed sometimes jokes, that didn’t alienate,” said Rowlands.
However, she said, the pope had shown commitment to causes that largely affect women, such as human trafficking and economic exploitation.
“On the social questions that affect women most adversely he won the admiration of many women who saw few speaking for them with such care and conviction on the world stage,” she said.
Natalia Imperatori-Lee, a religious studies professor at Manhattan College, said: “Overall, Francis helped the cause of women in the church.
“By elevating women to decision-making positions in the Vatican, and by entertaining a discussion of the diaconate of women, he opened doors that were previously closed,” she said.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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