Having two Irish women with voting rights at the Synod of Bishops currently under way in Rome would once have been a source of celebration for many Irish people, but no longer. Some of the lack of interest is understandable. The church’s own failures regarding the crime of sexual abuse accelerated Ireland’s cynicism about Catholicism, in tandem with the rise in incomes and individualism. It remains remarkable that of the five women religious representing the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) and its 2,000 member congregations with more than 600,000 women religious worldwide, two are Irish.
Sr Patricia Murray IBVM (Loreto Sisters) and Sr Mary Teresa Barron OLA (Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles) illustrate the contribution of Irish religious women not only to this country but across the world. A third representative, Canadian Sr Elizabeth Davis, is one of the Sisters of Mercy congregation founded by the pioneering Catherine McAuley, another Irish woman rarely given her due. Sr Elysée Izerimana (Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth) is from Burundi and Sr Maria Nirmalini (Apostolic Carmel) is from India.
To avoid allegations of sexism, I should add that Ireland is represented at the synod by Bishops Brendan Leahy of Limerick and Alan McGuckian of Raphoe, and a non-voting theological expert, Fr Eamonn Conway. Traditionally, the only non-bishops with voting rights were 10 members of male religious orders, but Pope Francis has changed that to five men and women religious. Sr Nathalie Becquart was appointed as undersecretary to the Synod on synodality in 2021, the first woman with a vote. There are now 70 non-bishops with voting rights, more than half of whom are women.
There is a debate about whether the mechanism of adding non-bishop votes to the Synod of Bishops itself is the correct way to include laypeople but, certainly, hearing a range of women’s voices is essential on matters that do not impact the “Church’s unity of doctrine, discipline and communion” as the Synodal Working Document puts it.
Dubliner Sr Pat Murray first came to public attention as spokesperson for the Loreto Sisters when six elderly sisters tragically died in an inferno in the Loreto on the Green convent in 1986. She says she still weeps for them today. She was a principal in Loreto, Crumlin, and did important and sometimes dangerous work in ecumenism with Catholic and Protestant teachers during the Troubles.
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Sr Murray has been a leader of the Loreto sisters in Ireland and internationally. She was the founding executive director of Solidarity with South Sudan, an initiative where 260 religious congregations worked to rebuild the educational, medical, agricultural and pastoral infrastructure of the newly independent South Sudan. In 2014 she became executive secretary of UISG.
Sr Mary T Barron, from Donegal, is the leader of the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles. She spent many years working in Nigeria and Tanzania with young people and women and also co-ordinating HIV/Aids programmes. She became president of UISG in 2023.
While some believe synodal voting rights are a bridge too far, others feel it is far from enough and are pushing for more radical changes that Pope Francis has already ruled out. Francis has a kitchen cabinet of nine cardinals. For the past year, he has insisted that three women also be present. According to the Irish Catholic, at a recent meeting, the cardinals took their breaks to facilitate the breastfeeding schedule of economist Valentina Rotondi and her three-month-old baby. Rotondi was there to brief them on the fragile position of women in the economy.
This phase of the Synod has deliberately shunted hot-button issues to study groups, to allow people to explore what profound collaboration between all members of the church, lay and ordained, could look like in practice.
These Irish women and the other women representatives, including a mother who received a round of applause for asking for help to raise young children in the Christian faith, are models of how women are already leaders in vital ways. And they are aware of where the church is growing. There are 1.3 billion Catholics, of whom two-thirds do not live in the West and who are mostly uninterested in some of Europe’s foremost concerns. For example, polygamy is a central concern in Africa, with its 256 million believers who make up 19 per cent of the world’s Catholics. Unlike the 21 per cent of European Catholics, African Catholicism continues to grow in size and commitment. An astonishing 94 per cent of Nigerian Catholics attend weekly mass.
Clericalism has been a scourge in the church but will not be overcome until there are changes in structures, especially greater involvement of lay people in the church’s mission. Members of religious orders have long traditions of a more consultative style of leadership, which can help to envisage what change might look like.
The kind of work these women and all the participants are doing will not generate many headlines but, as Fr Eamonn Conway, an Irish theological expert attending the synod said, “the outcomes of Synod 2021-2024 will be on God’s time and terms, not ours”.