In an unprecedented move, Pope Francis has appointed three female academics as consultants to the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog, paving the way for women to have a more integral role in the Church’s central administration.
The Vatican announced on April 21 that the Pontiff had named three women and two priests as consultants to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).
The women are Dr Laetitia Calmeyn, lecturer of theology at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris, and Dr Linda Ghisoni and Dr Michelina Tenance, respectively professor of canon law and professor of theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.
Dr Linda Ghisoni was appointed last year to head the laity section in the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, while her fellow Italian Dr Tenace is a judge in the First Instance Court of the Vicariate of Rome.
She is a consecrated woman, as is Belgian Dr Calmeyn, who has in the past worked as a palliative care nurse and a religion teacher.
The historic new appointments mark the first time ever that women or laity have been appointed as consultants to the CDF.
Consultants
Fr Sergio Paolo Bonanni, also a professor of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and Claretian Fr Manuel Jesús Arroba Conde, dean of the Institutum Utriusque Iuris at the Pontifical Lateran University, were also appointed as consultants.
The oldest of the Vatican’s nine curial congregations, the CDF is the Vatican department responsible for protecting and promulgating the doctrine of the Church. It is headed by Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, SJ, and consultants include cardinals, bishops, priests, canon lawyers and lay theologians. The new consultants’ role is to give advice on questions or matters pertaining to Church teaching.
Until the beginning of last year, all consultants to Vatican congregations had been men.
In January 2017, however, Pope Francis broke with tradition and appointed two women to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments: American Prof. Donna Orsuto, who teaches at the Gregorian University and is also director of the Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas in Rome, and Italy’s Dr Valeria Trapani (Italy), who teaches in the Pontifical Theological Faculty of St John the Evangelist in Palermo, Sicily.