UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Joshua J. McElwee | Jul. 31, 2013 NCR Today
A key former leader of U.S. Catholic sisters said Pope Francis should reconsider the Catholic church’s ban on women priests, likening the male-only priesthood to “a form of inequality which is a form of idolatry.”
Commenting to NCR on Francis’ remarks on the papal plane Monday that the late Pope John Paul II had “definitively … closed the door” to Catholic women priests, Mercy Sr. Theresa Kane said Francis has a chance to “begin a whole new movement and a whole new philosophy.”
“John Paul II was definitive, but John Paul II is dead,” said Kane. “You don’t just bury it because John Paul II said it. I wonder what [Francis’] own feeling is.”
Kane served as president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in 1979-80. During that time she made headlines across the world when she welcomed Pope John Paul II on his first visit to the United States in 1979 and pointedly asked him about the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood.
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