Politics

Leo XIV, all the “pink quotas” of the new Pope

Leone XIV since the beginning of his pontificate has put the religious at the center. With the rise of Sister Tiziana Merletti and Raffaella Petrini, in practice, there is a part of the Curia entirely to the female. But the node of their role in the Church is always open.

St. Augustine is not saved from the “fake”, described on social networks as the most misogynist of the Church Fathers. Quite the opposite; reading his theological work – the De Trinitate – We realize that the Hipponate recommended: “You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. There is no more Jew, neither Greek nor a slave or free, nor male or female, because you are all only in Jesus Christ”. Leone XIV – The first Augustinian pontiff – he made his debut in his documents with the appointment of a woman. The female condition has been shaking the Church and its hierarchies for years and a change of protest rises from the convents. Pope Prevost thus raised, a week after having climbed the Soglio di Pietro, Sister Tiziana Merletti – former superior general of the Franciscan Sisters of the poor – to the rank of secretary of the Dicastery for the institutes of consecrated life and the apostolic life companies.

So much it was enough to say that he moves in continuity with Francesco, Since the prefect of that dicastery is already Sister Simona Brambilla of the missionary nuns of the console. In practice there is a piece of Curia entirely female. This was sufficient for traditionalists to say that the new pontiff betrays the “sacred potestas” which should be reserved only for the ordinated and therefore to males since the female priesthood is not there. The position of an ultra -treatmentalist theologian such as the Swiss Martin Gricking, who resigned, slamming the door from Vicar General of the Bishopric of Coira because the bishop Joseph Bonnemain had opened up to women, is very hard. Griching claims that the new Pope must correct himself otherwise he places himself – with his appointment of Sister Merletti and with the confirmation of Sister Brambilla – outside the Vatican Council II. The clash is “political” because it is a question of establishing if as Francesco said one of the sins that have been committed by the hierarchies “it is to maleness the Church”. The deceased Pontiff gave a concrete sign of his thoughts by entrusting the Governorate – would be the Palazzo Chigi of the Vatican State – to a nun, Raffaella Petrini, who has passed as secretary to President of the Governorate from March 1st.

Francesco pushed to the extreme this reasoning on femininity to the point of bringing Pachamama – the Panamericana of fertility – to the Basilica of San Pietro in procession. Leo XIV for its long mission in Peru well knows that instinctual vision of femininity, but it seems more inclined to interpret the eternal feminine: the woman like Goethe places it in Faust in a dimension of superior vitalism. And it is no coincidence that Prevost elected on the day of the Madonna of Pompeii invoked it by saying: “Maria must walk with us, she must guide us with her love”. The construction of the female church of Leone XIV starts from here, which is certainly not alien to the reflections of a theologian like Janine Hourcade who dedicated his life to defining the female church – his most famous essay is precisely The eternal femininemystical women – to the point of imagining a female Gospel where the Maddalena tells “His” Christ, where the Samaritan tells of himself, where at the wedding of Cana Jesus does not say to Mary “What do I have to do with you woman?”, But it is the Madonna itself that I motivate the Nazarene.

And there is a large theological space that Prevost intends to occupy by women. He confirmed at the top from the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences Sister Helen Alford, in a role that had already been by Margaret Archer and has been increasing, since its first days of kingdom, the presence of women at the top of the different institutes where between 2013 and 2023, their percentage went from 19.2 to 23.4 percent. Moreover, when he was only Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost he had at his side as secretary of the Synod of the bishops Sister Nathalie Bucquart, French Saveriana. Therefore the appointment of Sister Merletti should not be read as a slavish continuity with Bergoglio. It is the intention of Leone XIV listen to the discomfort of the nuns. It is no coincidence that precisely from the dicastery for the institutes of consecrated life they left in the era Bergogliana continuous invitations to leave the monasteries. Money is needed to the Vatican and one of the roads is to sell the convents. With the Constitution Praedicate evangeliumBergoglio enhanced the ability to intervene by the dicastery. Religious orders have – to limit us to Italy alone – an immense assets: 46 thousand buildings for 38.6 million square meters that are worth 42.5 billion euros. About 40 percent are empty and many to be restored. Hence the pressure especially on the nuns because they leave their “houses”.

Moreover, monacal vocations are in dramatic contraction. There are now less than 600 thousand in the world and in Italy there are about 66 thousand, but with a very high average age. These elderly religious are cared for by the sisters, but this determines a progressive contraction of their activities. It is estimated that in ten years the school institutions – in particular kindergartens and maternal – managed by religious have gone from 10 thousand to just under 7 thousand. The appointment of Sister Merletti who supports the Prefect goes in the direction of revitalizing attention to the religious who claim to get out of this shadow cone. Simona Segoloni Ruta, professor of systematic theology and a member of the Italian theologian coordination that speaks of “buried talents”, has well called it. According to Segoloni Ruta in the Church women are a human capital not invested for fear of the hierarchies that control them through failure to order.

The theme of priest women is one of the major elements of clash between the Church of Rome and the German Synod that asked the question, together with the marriage of priests and the union of homosexual couples. Georg Bätzing, president of the German Episcopal Conference, put Leo XIV in the face of the synod determinations and put it precisely on the female priesthood, on homosexual couples and on the volunteer celibacy of worship ministers. An indirect response starting from the family The Pope gave it when he reiterated “the family, founded on the stable union between man and woman is a small but true society, and prior to every civil society”. As if to say: there is a limit beyond which I do not intend to go. Even in the documents he has carried out there is a further response; At the Pontifical Institute John Paul II Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, always close to Francesco’s positions and repeatedly accused by traditionalists of having an almost “heretical” position on abortion and homosexual couples and promoter of the dialogue on synodality, was replaced by Cardinal Baldassarre Reina, considered a defender of the doctrine even if not the other.

To this is added that Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect emeritus of the congregation For the divine cult and the discipline of the sacraments, leader, also in the recent conclave, of the African cardinals very close to tradition and which certainly favored the election of Prevost, was appointed special envoy to the liturgical celebrations of the Sanctuary of Sainte-Anne-D’Auay for the four hundred years of the appearances of Sant’Anna, mother of the Virgin Mary. Two symbols in a single act: the opening to traditionalists and the confirmation of the affected Marian of the Pontiff who brings him closest to Karol Wojtyla than to Francesco.

So he is a pope who looks to women, who has the discomfort of consecrated well – He often turned into the news: from the escape delego nuns of the cloister from the convent of San Giacomo di Veglia to Vittorio Veneto to the Maddalene Sisters of Vigevano evicted by the convent, by the Asturian Rebelli Sisters who open a restaurant to those who barricaded themselves in their cells in Marradi, just to name a few – but who intends to operate by exercising a “soft power” because – as the bib Marinella Perroni – “The question about the role of women in the Church is strongly demanding”. But from the first acts it is understood that Leo XIV is determined to give an answer.