C9 Addresses the Issue of Women in the Church

Published on February 5, 2024, the photo of the “C9” at work has left more than one prelate perplexed, and for good reason. It is not common to see women participating in one of the meetings of the Council of Nine Cardinals supposed to help Pope Francis with the government of the Church. This is especially so when one of the participants happens to be an Anglican “bishop.”

Matteo Bruni, Director of the Holy See Press Room, confirmed the presence of the Reverend Jo Bailey Wells, assistant general secretary of the Anglican Communion, of Sister Linda Pocher, a Salesian sister teaching Christology and Mariology at the Pontifical University of Auxilium, and Giulia Di Berardino, a “consecrated virgin” exercising the office of “liturgist” in the diocese of Verona, Italy.

Jo Bailey Wells was one of the first women to be ordained in the Church of England and was noted for having signed academic contributions promoting gender ideology. Her presence around the high prelates of the C9 did not fail to cause astonishment – not to say discomfort – in the corridors of the Vatican.

For her part, Sister Linda Pocher gave an interview to the religious information agency Vida Nueva on December 13, 2023, in which she denounced alleged “more or less aggressive forms of machismo and clericalism” within the Church. 

The Holy See Press Room has not published information on the content of the discussions of the singularly expanded C9, but the February 5-6 meeting comes in the wake of the first assembly of the Synod on Synodality last October during which divisions appeared over the possibility of establishing a female “diaconate.”

The synod secretariat then urged Christian communities “to listen to the feminine dimension of the Church so that reflection and decision-making can take place in order to benefit from the irreplaceable contribution of women”: a way of avoiding the issue while acknowledging important fundamental differences.

The C9 winter meeting devoted to this theme can be interpreted as a strategy to circumvent the obstacles encountered at the Synod on Synodality from the most conservative members who were reluctant to touch the divine constitution of the Church.