Pope: Women have ‘legitimate claims’ for justice and equality

Pope Francis has said women have “legitimate claims” to seek more justice and equality in the Catholic Church, but stopped short of endorsing more sweeping calls to recognise the “urgency of an inevitable change” to give them leadership roles.

Francis issued a document inspired by an October meeting of the world’s bishops on better ministering to today’s young Catholics.

The meeting was marked by demands for greater women’s rights, and the bishops’ final document called the need for women to have positions of responsibility and decisionmaking in the church “a duty of justice”.

In a lengthy document titled “Christ is alive”, Pope Francis said only that a church that listens to young people must be attentive to women’s “legitimate claims” for equality and justice.

“A living church can look back on history and acknowledge a fair share of male authoritarianism, domination, various forms of enslavement, abuse and sexist violence,” Pope Francis wrote.

“With this outlook, she can support the call to respect women’s rights, and offer convinced support for greater reciprocity between males and females, while not agreeing with everything some feminist groups propose.”

Pope Francis wrote that he was inspired by all the reflections at the synod but wanted to use his text to “summarise those proposals I considered most significant”.

The document, known as an apostolic exhortation, covers a wide range of issues confronting young people today, noting that many feel alienated from the Church because of its sexual and financial scandals, and are themselves suffering from untold forms of exploitation, conflict and despair.

A hefty chunk of the document focuses on the promises and perils of the digital world and dedicates ample space to the plight of migrants.

It uses millennial lingo, calling the Virgin Mary an “influencer” and describing relations with God in computing terms: “hard disk”, “archive” and “deleting”.

The document calls for urgent reform of Catholic schools and youth ministry programmes, saying they are oftenfocusedonself-preservation and protecting the young from outside errors, and are divorced from the reality of the lives lived by the young.

“Such a youth ministry ends up completely removed from the world of young people and suited only to an elite Christian youth that sees itself as different, while living in an empty and unproductive isolation,” he wrote.

It also acknowledges the importance of sexuality to young people as part of their development, but it uses the term “homosexuality” only once.