Cherie Blair, at Angelicum, calls for more women in curial leadership

December 16, 2008

Speaking at the Angelicum on Friday, Cheri Blair, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, called for an increased number of women in leadership roles in the Roman Curia. “Just as diversity between and within the sexes enriches human life and strengthens our civil society, so, too, I believe would it strengthen the Church if we could see more women in leadership roles within it,” she said, asking rhetorically whether “half of all Curia posts” could be filled by women.

Pro-life advocates criticized Mrs. Blair’s appearance at the pontifical university. “We fear that the conference may well have been stage-managed so that Mrs. Blair did not have to explain her track-record of endorsing pro-abortion organizations, enabling her and others to bubble-wrap her dissent from Catholic teaching,” said John Smeaton, the director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. Father Bruce Williams, a Dominican professor of theology, said from the floor after Mrs. Blair’s talk that such “accusations were at the very best rash, if not outright calumnious, and I regret that you were subjected to that.”

 

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Further information:

• More women leaders needed at the Vatican, says Cherie Blair (CNS)
• Cherie Blair Denies Pro-Abortion Label at Angelicum Lecture (LifeSiteNews.com)