Record number of women to attend the Catholic Bishop's Synod

Church in the World
13 September 2008


Robert Mickens


A record number of women will participate in next month's Synod of Bishops on the Word of God. Pope Benedict XVI has named six female scholars as "experts" and 19 women as observers, making it the largest group of women ever appointed to a synod assembly.

There were no women among the experts at the 2005 Synod on the Eucharist and just one at the Synod on Religious Life in 2001.

The women figure in the list of papal appointments to the forthcoming synod published on 6 September. They are among a total of 41 experts and 38 "auditors" or observers.


The women experts include three scripture scholars - Professor Bruna Costacurta and Sr Nuria Calduch Benages, both of whom teach at Rome's Gregorian University, and Sr Mary Jerome Obiorah, professor at the major seminary in Onitsha, Nigeria. Also appointed was Sr Sara Butler, professor of dogma at St Joseph's Seminary in New York and one of only two female members of the Vatican-sponsored International Theological Commission. The other two women experts at the synod are Marguerite Léna, philosophy teacher at the Madeleine Daniélou school for girls in Paris; and Sr Germana Strola, a Trappist nun in Italy.

The lone female among 16 experts at the Synod on Religious Life was Sr Enrica Rosanna, who has since become a co-undersecretary of the Congregation for Religious.

"The Vatican is to be congratulated," said FutureChurch, a US-based reform group that has been lobbying bishops around the world over the last two years to include more women experts at the synod. "We look forward to the day when half of the designated experts are women, rather than 15 per cent," the group said in a statement.

Among the other experts appointed to the synod are Br Enzo Bianchi, founder of the Bose Ecumenical Community in northern Italy; Fr Stephen Pisano, rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome; Fr Klemens Stock, secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission; and Fr Giorgio Zevini, dean of theology at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome and author of the Synod's working paper. Experts take part in small group discussions and assist the Synod officers on technical and theological questions. Neither they nor observers have a vote. Only bishops and representatives of male religious orders may vote. More