(Brussels, Belgium) Pope Francis was strongly challenged on Saturday by students on the question of gender equality and the “invisibility of women”, during a meeting devoted to ecology and development sustainability in a Belgian university.
Posted at 12:51 p.m.
“The call for integral development seems to us to be incompatible with positions on homosexuality and with the place of women in the Catholic Church,” students from the French-speaking Catholic university of Louvain-la-Neuve challenged. (center), UC Louvain.
“The invisibilization of women […] has consequences on the way we experience the ecological transition,” they added in this text read in public in front of several hundred students and members of the academic and university staff.
“The Church is a woman,” Francis replied. “What characterizes women, what is feminine, is not determined by consensus or ideologies,” he continued, without addressing what the concrete developments could be on the place of women in the Church. .
Following this exchange, UC Louvain published a press release saying its “incomprehension” and “disapproval” of certain comments about women.
To say, as the Pope affirmed, that women are “fruitful welcome, care, vital dedication” is “a reductive position,” criticized the university, which wants to be “inclusive” and opposed to sexism.
Since his election in 2013, the Argentine pope has given more and more space to women, for example increasing the number of appointments to positions of responsibility in the Curia, the central government of the Holy See. But the associations criticize it for not doing enough in this direction, in particular by refusing to open the way to the female diaconate.
This exchange comes a few days before the opening at the Vatican of the General Assembly of the Synod on the Future of the Church, a vast project of the Pope which focuses in particular on the place of women in the Church.
Already on Friday, the rector of the University of Louvain in Flanders (KU Leuven) Luc Sels had questioned the Pope on the question of “this big difference between men and women in the Church which de facto is so often supported by women” .
“Wouldn’t the Church be warmer with a more important place given to women also in the priesthood? “, he asked, a question to which François did not answer.
Arriving in Belgium on Thursday evening, Pope Francis is due to conclude his visit on Sunday with a high mass at the King Baudouin stadium in Brussels where more than 35,000 faithful are expected.
