Cardinal Grech renews Synod’s call for greater participation of women in Church leadership

September 05, 2025

In a September 4 address to a Mariological conference, Cardinal Mario Grech, appointed secretary general of the Synod of Bishops in 2020, renewed the synod on synodality’s call for greater participation of women in the leadership of the Church.

Cardinal Grech asked, “What can we learn from Mary to grow as a synodal Church? This chapter of synodal ecclesiology remains to be written.”

The answer to this question, he said, is twofold.

“It is by contemplating the person of Mary, her life, her virtues, that the Church will be able to develop her example from a synodal perspective. The first dimension the Church is called to develop following Mary’s example is undoubtedly that of listening: to God, to the Spirit, to others.”

“It is a listening grounded in profound interior silence,” he continued. “In a society and a Church often characterized by a high volume of words and actions, Mary teaches us the fundamental value of interior silence, an essential condition for authentic discernment.”

Cardinal Grech then said, “Mary is a woman. The theme of women emerged forcefully from the synodal process, from the first to the last stage.”

Citing the synod on synodality’s Final Document (n. 60), Cardinal Grech commented:

It recognizes that, unfortunately, “women continue to encounter obstacles in obtaining fuller recognition of their charisms, their vocation, and their place in the various areas of the Church’s life, to the detriment of service to the common mission.” It is in this paragraph—as already seen—that Mary’s presence in the Upper Room is recalled “together with other women who had followed the Lord” on the day of Pentecost.

The Final Document then seeks to enhance the forms of women’s presence in the Church today and to open a broader horizon on their active participation in the life and mission of the Church, without forgetting open questions such as, for example, “women’s access to the diaconal ministry.” One sentence is particularly significant: “There are no reasons that prevent women from assuming leadership roles in the Church: what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.”

Cardinal Grech concluded by contrasting “listening to the Spirit” (on the one hand) and a “clerical model,” as well as “contemporary culture” (on the other hand).

“It seems to me that the challenge of women’s participation in the Church’s mission is played out on the basis of a consensus that can and must mature through listening to the Spirit,” he said. “It is easy to rely on traditional arguments to defend a status quo that would perpetuate a clerical model of the Church, or to demand that the Church align itself with the tenets of contemporary culture.”

 

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Further information:

• Chiesa sinodale nella dimensione di Maria (L'Osservatore Romano, 9/4/25)
• For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission: Final Document