Pope Francis today issued his official response to October’s ‘Amazon Synod’, which discussed a plan to ordain married men in the region. He was expected to endorse it and thus open the door for the ordination of married men throughout the whole Catholic Church. (It’s already permitted in Eastern-rite Churches.)
Instead, his apostolic exhortation ignores the subject. The Pope has ‘rejected the proposal’, reports CNN disapprovingly. It adds:
‘The lack of an opening for married priests, or women deacons, is expected to disappoint the Pope’s liberal supporters, particularly in the Americas and Europe.“People are starting to adjust their expectations,” said Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. “The major reforms they were expecting of him may never come”.’
‘Expected to disappoint’ is putting it mildly. The precise ramifications of the new document, Querida Amazonia, are difficult to judge – but then that’s always the case with Francis’s flowery and evasive official pronouncements.
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