(Vatican Radio) In the course of a dialogue during a meeting with the participants in the Plenary Assembly of Superiors General, which took place in May, Pope Francis expressed his intention to “establish an official commission that could study the question” of the diaconate of women, “especially with regard to the first ages of the Church.”

After intense prayer and mature reflection, Pope Francis has decided to institute the Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women. As president of the Commission, Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, SJ. In addition to Archbishop Ladaria, the commission is composed of six women and six men from academic institutions around the world.

Below, please find the complete list of the members of the Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women:

Dear Rene and other co-signatories,

These are important questions you raise (Newsletter, 12 July 2016) that I’ve been trying to get my head around for perhaps a decade or more, even discussing them quite a number of times with Bob Kaiser. In our country (Australia), and in new statistics released today for Germany [LINK], 90% of the adult baptized have ceased participating and listening. They don’t write letters of protest to bishops, or the pope, as they see that exercise as a complete waste of time, energy, even the cost of a postage stamp. It is seen as absolutely futile as they appear to have learned a long time ago that the hierarchy are only listening to a small “remnant element” who want to undo completely the insights of Vatican II. The recent Life-Site video which you may have seen which has been sent to Pope Francis and the 218 active cardinals in the world are the sort of people the rest of us are competing against. If you haven’t seen the video we’ve uploaded a copy of it on catholica

To representatives of Church Reform Organizations:

We'd like to explore ways that we might work together to bring about the reform that we are all striving to create. Even though each of our groups have differing missions focused on specific issues, there are certain basic principles that are universal to all of us:

1. The People of God should have a deliberative voice in the governance of our Church;
2. Too many Catholics simply go along with the institutional Church unaware that their voice could make a difference;
3. These people could be guided and taught that they have the right and the duty to speak up for the good of the Church.

Is there something we could all do to move the People who are the Church out of their pews and into a place where they would begin to speak up?

by Ann Gilroy RSJ

Women Religious welcome any development in Church that responds to women’s repeated call to have an equal share in the decision-making. Pope Francis’s proposal to set up a Commission to study the possibility of having women deacons, while not yet a decision to change a structure, is offering Catholic women a frisson of promise.

The composition of the members of the Commission will be crucial for credibility and for symbolic value. Will it have the usual token couple of women? Will at least half be women? Or even – will the majority be women? Certainly it will not be difficult to find qualified women to serve, as more than one Catholic theologian and scripture scholar has researched in this area in the last decades, including Phyllis Zagano, an internationally renowned academic in the United States, who has published extensively on women deacons. We remember the study of women deacons set up in the 1990s which fizzled out and we will be watching that this new initiative does not meet a similar fate.

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