ROME (CNS) — An international group of permanent deacons and their wives met in Rome to reflect together on how their service can contribute to building a more synodal church, one where the gifts and responsibilities of all its members are recognized.
Questions about the possibility of opening the diaconate to women were part of the conversation Feb. 21 at Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere during the Jubilee of Deacons.
Sponsored by the Community of the Diaconate in Italy and the U.S.-based Discerning Deacons, the meeting drew about 250 people.
Belgian Deacon Geert De Cubber, the only permanent deacon who was a member of the synod assemblies in 2023 and 2024, told the group in Rome how he had to explain the role of permanent deacons at the synod to a bishop who had said he did not need deacons because he had enough priests.
“His words broke my deacon’s heart,” he said.
“Deacons are sent by the church to places she does not, cannot or may not always reach,” he said. “We listen, especially to those who are rejected — by the world, by their friends, sometimes even by the church.”
“On Sundays,” Deacon De Cubber said, “we bring the realities of those we serve to the altar and the pulpit, ensuring that their voices and struggles are part of the church’s prayer and mission.”
Reflecting on the diaconate “inevitably raises the question of the inclusion of women,” he told the group, adding that he believes women should be ordained deacons as long as steps are taken to “ensure they are not clericalized.”
Speaking later to Catholic News Service, Deacon De Cubber said, women “definitely bring something unique to the church as a whole. So why couldn’t they bring something new and perhaps unexpected into ministry, including ordained ministry?”
“We should seriously think about that,” he said, adding that women served as deacons in the early centuries of the church, “so it is in our tradition.”
“Clericalism” in the sense of “thinking you are more important than someone else” is something all ordained ministers must fight, he said. But ordination is important because it signifies a “a lifelong commitment” to ministry.
In early February, the Vatican confirmed, the second commission on women and the diaconate established by Pope Francis in 2020 and revived by him during the synod assembly in October had met. However, the commission issued no statement on its discussions.
Ellie Hidalgo, co-director of Discerning Deacons, told CNS that until the synod, the commission was focused on the history and theology of the diaconate and the debate over whether women referred to as deacons in the New Testament and in the early church were “ordained” or simply assigned ministries.
But the synod added a focus on current pastoral needs and the church’s mission today, she said; “it’s like the third leg of the stool. And so, if we’re looking at history and theology and the pastoral realities together, could we better get a sense of: What is the Holy Spirit asking of us now to be church in the third millennium?”
As part of the church’s ongoing reflection on women deacons, she said, Discerning Deacons sent the Vatican the testimonies of 29 women ministering in the church who described their call to “diakonia” or service and “some of the constraints that they come up against consistently in serving the church’s mission because of the lack of ordination,” particularly when ministering in prisons, hospitals, campus ministry or even parishes.
Yolanda Scott Brown, former parish life director at Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood, Calif., said that even though she had wonderful relationships with priests and deacons, having to turn to them when one of her parishioners wanted to be baptized, married or needed to be buried was difficult for her and sometimes for the parishioner.
“Those valuable, beautiful relationships that were nurtured,” she said, had to be turned over to someone who did not have the time or opportunity to build the same connections.
Deacon Fernando Moreno and his wife, Maria Lourdes González Garcia, from the Archdiocese of Monterrey, Mexico, told CNS that González plays a vital support role in her husband’s ministry of charity and social service, which includes feeding more than 2,500 people each week and giving them a few minutes of religious instruction.
“She has been an important part of this effort,” Moreno said. “She helped develop this program of ‘food and formation.'”
Moreno said that “women are very important in supporting the church and (are) in many important positions but not necessarily in ordained ministry. But without women, we would not be able to do what we do.”
But González said she worries that many Catholic women do not realize the importance of their ministry within their own families, building the domestic church and educating their children.
“I think that to save the family, you need to begin in the family,” she said. “We need to be the image of Mary in the home and evangelize with our example at home.”
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