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Pope Rules Out Women's Ordination

by VOA News

   Pope Francis has ruled out women's ordination, saying that Roman
   Catholic Church ban on women becoming priests will never be changed.
   Francis made the remark Tuesday aboard a plane on his way back to Rome
   from Sweden, responding to a Swedish female reporter who noted the head
   of Lutheran Church who welcomed him in Sweden was a woman.

   "Concerning the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, St. Pope
   John Paul II had the last clear word on this and it stands, this
   stands," he said.
   Reporter: Forever, forever? Never, never?.
   Pope Francis: "If we read carefully the declaration by St. John Paul
   II, it is going in that direction."
   Following a 1994 study, Pope John Paul ruled out female ordination in
   his apostolic letter "Priestly Ordination," declaring "the Church has
   no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that
   this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."

   Women deacons
   In August, Pope Francis created a special commission to examine the
   role of women deacons in the Catholic Church, although he did not
   suggest the church would permit women to become priests.

   The pope appointed Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, the
   secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as
   president of the 13-member commission. In addition to Ladaria, six
   women and six men from academic institutions around the world serve on
   the commission.

   The Vatican did not set a date for the commission to begin work or a
   deadline for it to reach conclusions.
   Francis accepted a proposal to create the official study commission
   during a closed-door meeting with some 900 superiors of women's
   religious orders, gathered in Rome for their triennial assembly in May.