From the very beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis has sent the message that women matter as much as men in the life of the church. During a plane interview in November 2022—his favoured setting for breaking free from the scripted confines of the Vatican—he stated a “society that does not give women the same rights as men will become impoverished.”
But to better appreciate Francis’s understanding of women and their role in the church, we first need to step back and consider the role of the laity in the church. Women and men who are not clerics (deacons, priests, and bishops) constitute the laity and are a formidable majority of the global membership. The problem is that only half of the laity feel that they are valued for something beyond their baptism. For women, it is largely their motherhood and devotionalism that seem to earn the church’s respect, leading to the perception that, at least at ground level, they are second-class citizens in the church.
