The Church is a Mother and Woman is her Image

On 8th March Gabriella Gambino, Undersecretary of our Dicastery, also spoke during the round table at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross on the “role of women in the Church”. During her talk, the full text of which is attached, she said, among other things: “I was able to listen to the words of the Holy Father live and had the privilege of looking at the intensity of his face while he pronounced those words that immediately resounded all over the world”. The Pope’s strong words related to women and their role in the Church: “It is not a question of giving more functions to women in the Church. It’s a question of integrating the woman as the image of the Church into our thinking. And also thinking about the Church with the categories of a woman”. “While I was listening to the Pope” – said Gambino during her intervention at the round table – I felt he was finally expressing the true meaning of the presence and role of women in the Church.  He was putting into words what I have always thought and felt about women of faith, and especially since I was called from the world to work in the Church, for the Church and as the Church. The Church is a woman, a bride, a mother.  It is through women that she can learn to talk about herself, of what establishes the natural co-existence of women in the Church alongside men and, especially, alongside ordained priests.