No women priests, Pope Francis says

This video says about itself:

Pope Francis Excommunicates Priest for Supporting Women, LGBT People

29 September 2013

Pope Francis has excommunicated an Australian priest from the Church for his liberal values and activism. Fr. Greg Reynolds publicly supports LGBT rights, marriage equality and women’s ordination, three big no-nos in Catholic tradition.

Read more here.

In some respects, Pope Francis I is an improvement compared to his predecessors Benedict XVI and John Paul II.

However, on some issues there is unfortunately no progress.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV:

Pope: women will never be priests

Today, 21:05

Pope Francis precludes that women can ever be priests. He did that in a conversation with reporters aboard his plane on the way back to the Vatican after a visit to Sweden.

A Swedish journalist remarked that Francis was welcomed in Sweden by the head of the Lutheran church, a woman, and asked him if he thought that women could occupy such high positions in the Roman Catholic Church.

Francis then said that Pope John Paul II had spoken the last word about that. He pointed that out in an apostolic letter in 1994, refusing to open the priesthood to women.

Everlasting

“But is that forever, forever?” asked the journalist. The response of the pope then was: “If we carefully read the Letter of Saint John Paul II, then it is going in that direction.”

According to the Vatican this is an unshakable part of Catholic tradition. Jesus deliberately chose only men as apostles, is the position. That was logical according to the standards of the time, say proponents of female priesthood.

Francis has said that women can not be ordained, but supporters hope that a future pope will nullify that decision.

Discussion

In August, the pope set up a committee to investigate the role of women deacons in the early days of Christianity. It gave advocates of equality hope for a greater role for women in the Catholic Church in the future.

This blog reported in 2013:

New questions are emerging about the role of women in the early Christian church after the Vatican this week unveiled recently restored frescoes in the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome.

Some say the paintings depict women serving as priests during Christianity’s beginning centuries.

Women in antiquity could be priests in most non-Christian religions.