UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Phyllis Zagano | Feb. 11, 2015 Just Catholic
You don’t have to speak Italian to understand the Vatican’s recent “Women’s Cultures” events, but it could help. (It was all in Italian.)
The Pontifical Council for Culture touted its meetings as analyses of the status of the world’s 3.5 billion women. (About 43 million of them speak Italian.)
The council’s offensive Christmas-week infomercial was supposed to crowdsource a video for its opening event, which did flash a few (unreadable) submissions toward its end. The avant garde production in Teatro Argentina, a Roman opera house, included a jazz trio, professionally produced videos and scripted declamations. (All in Italian.)
What are we to make of all this? The Pontifical Council for Culture seems to be the Vatican’s faculty of arts and letters. Like all Vatican councils and congregations, it is predominantly male. It includes 13 cardinals, 14 bishops and four “men of culture.” It has 35 consultors, including seven women. Its 16-person staff has male professionals and four female secretaries. It is headed by four clerics: a prefect, a delegate, a secretary and an undersecretary. Such is the crowd that set out to advise the pope on women. (In Italian.)
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