ROME
Washington Post
By Ashley McGuire,
Published: March 8
This morning as I stepped out of a café in Rome, I was greeted by a smiling man offering me a sprig of mimosa flowers.
Today is the Festa della Donna, or Women’s Day in Italy, and the mimosa is the flower traditionally given to women on this day.
I found it perfectly appropriate that I began a week long trip in Rome for the upcoming papal conclave on Woman’s Day. With the Catholic Church at the forefront of international news given recent events, many are using the opportunity to frame the Vatican and the Catholic Church more broadly as a place that excludes women. The next pope will be a man elected by 115 men, therefore women must have no role in the life of the faith, the logic goes.
I returned to my home for the next week, a friend’s apartment, with two cappuccinos in hand. My friend, a woman, is studying to be a canon lawyer, an ecclesiastical role that entails tremendous authority in adjudicating church matters.
When we couldn’t figure out the credentialing process, she called a friend who is a Vatican journalist, or a Vaticanista as they are known around here. But she was too busy carting around journalists and cardinals.
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