VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast
Barbie Latza Nadeau
VATICAN CITY — One has to wonder who spiked the holy water when the publicity gurus for the Pontifical Council for Culture came up with the idea to use a sexy blond actress as their talent in an ad ahead of a plenary conference in Rome this week called Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference. The protagonist, Nancy Brilli, a sort of Italian Suzanne Somers, is no doubt devout in her faith. But considering Brilli’s best-known role was as a ditzy adulteress in a 1980s comedy, one might ask exactly who the Vatican is trying to reach with it latest missive. Writing in National Catholic Reporter, Phyllis Zagano, a research associate at Hofstra University, has the million-dollar question: “Is the Vatican convinced women’s intellectual abilities rise only to the level of televised soap operas and cosmetics commercials?”
Brilli, fabulous at 50, may be a fine actress. But in the Vatican’s advertisement, she pouts for the camera and says, “I am sure you have asked yourself many times who you are, what you do, what you think about your being a woman, your strengths, your difficulties, your body, and your spiritual life,” before asking women to send in a one-minute video with the hashtag #lifeofwomen to be considered for the February 4-7 conference opening program. After a tsunami of criticism from Catholic women who said they don’t relate to Brilli, the Vatican took down the English version of the video.
Perhaps the Vatican can be forgiven for not knowing its female audience. After all, it is hard to understand the opponent in the fight for equality when there are so few women in the hierarchy of the Holy See’s good old boys’ club. One person who has been knocking at the door for a long time is Miriam Duignan, communications director for the Catholic reform think tank Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research and a leader in the WOW Women’s Ordination Worldwide movement. Last year she took 700 letters to Pope Francis from women who have been called to the priesthood, but the open-minded pope didn’t respond to a single one. The Catholic Church has been telling women to wait their turn for far too long, she says. “So many men in the priesthood who gravitate to the Vatican like to live in their fortress on the hill as if women don’t exist,” she told The Daily Beast. “The world will not fall apart if there are more women in the church.”
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