News and Media Releases

Press Release 5 December 2025: 

We Are Church International is very disappointed that the ordination of Women Deacons has been rejected though not definitively by a commission of 5 men and 5 women. It is shocking that 5 of this commission believe that the masculinity of Christ is an integral part of sacramental identity!

Such commissions can be given a conservative or reformist bias, depending on who is selected. It would have been much better to use the Synodal process including all the people of God to determine if the Holy Spirit sees the equality of women as now long overdue in our Church.

Jesus was male, but he never ever displayed any masculine traits that would demean anyone. Jesus never instituted the priesthood!Would he do so? When he was consistently criticizing the way 'priesthood' was being exercised in his time?He had men and women at his table at the last Passover with his disciples when he commanded all to do what he had done in memory of him viz. washing each other's feet and breaking his body for all.

Many women around the world are already performing the work of ordained priests without ordination even as deacons.They are baptizing, conducting funerals, blessing marriages, and conducting Eucharistic liturgies. They hold communities together in Asia as well as in the West.That this denial of the diaconate to women continues to happen without acknowledging this contribution of women only exhibits the deep-rooted misogyny in the Catholic Church.

In 1975 The Pontifical Biblical Commission on the Ordination of Women confirmed that there was nothing in scripture to exclude women from ordination. And on 26 October 2025 Pope Leo XlV confirmed that the inclusion of women was a cultural issue.But it is time the Church evangelize cultures like Jesus did in his time, when he made a woman the first witness of his resurrection; he broke the cultural taboo of uncleaness when he allowed the woman with the flow of blood to touch him, he spoke to a Samaritan woman and discussed scripture with her.These are some instances only.

We call on Pope Leo XlV to promote the ordination of women as it is a scandal for our Church to treat women as inferior and subordinate to men. This gives a false role model which supports patriarchal structures around the world leading to the physical, sexual and spiritual abuse of women.

We Are Church International will continue to work and pray for the full equality of women in our communities at grassroots levels where real reforms are taking place.

Press contacts:

Colm Holmes, Chair We Are Church International
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: +353 86606 3636

Dr Martha Heizer, Vice-Chair We Are Church International
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: +43 650 4168500

We Are Church International are shocked and disappointed that the ordination of Women has been deleted from the Synod on Synodality 2023-24.

Before the 2023 Synod the ordination of Women as Priests was removed from the agenda, despite the issue having been raised in many countries. So much for listening and parrhesia!

But the ordination of Women as Deacons was assigned to Study Group 5, thus removing this topic from the 2024 Synod.

The Dicastery for Doctrine and Faith were entrusted with responsibility for Study Group 5. Now we learn that the Dicastery for Doctrine and Faith has passed on the issue of Women Deacons to the Second Study Commission on the Female Diaconate – which was set up in 2020 but has not produced any report to date. The Dicastery for Doctrine and Faith was given responsibility for Study Group 5, but has now ejected it back to the 2020 Study Commission! The Dicastery has not given any date by which the 2020 Study Commission will report as they report directly to the Pope!

So the Dicastery has managed to completely delete the important issue of Women Deacons from the Synod!

Study Groups can be given a conservative or reformist bias, depending on who is selected. It would be much better to use the Synodal process to determine if the Holy Spirit sees the equality of women as now overdue in our Church.

In 1975 The Pontifical Biblical Commission on the Ordination of Women confirmed that there was nothing in the gospels to exclude women from ordination. And on 26 October 2025 Pope Leo XlV confirmed that the inclusion of women was a cultural issue. As such it should be included in the Synodal process. We call on Pope Leo XlV to promote the ordination of women as it is a scandal for our Church to treat women as inferior and subordinate to men.

Press contacts:

Colm Holmes, Chair We Are Church International
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: +353 86606 3636

Dr Martha Heizer, Vice-Chair We Are Church International
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: +43 650 4168500

We Are Church is at the 2025 Asian Youth Academy /Asian Theology Forum in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Martin Schockenhoff from Wir Sind Kirche, Germany, is representing We Are Church at this year's forum.  He is pictured with friends from past years.

As a relevant spiritual formation project for young activists, the AYA/ATF places much emphasis on their religious identity amid the all-things-mixed global world. It also aims to make them what Pope Francis calls “missionary disciples” armed with strong Christian identity with socio-political awareness, socio-cultural analysis and spiritualty.

The emphasis at this year's forum is on:

• "Asian Christianity’s Critical Approach to COP 30,
• UN-led SDGs
• Religious Nationalism from the View of Peoples Caught in a Desperate Situation in Asia"

		We Are Church is the Volcano

We Are Church supporter, Soline Humbert, invites you to buy her book and journey with her vocation.

As a student in Trinity College Dublin, Soline Humbert experienced a call to the priesthood in the Catholic Church, which she was unable to pursue because of the ban on women’s ordination. She found herself on a collision course with a powerful church hierarchy intent on quashing any such vocation, and was even warned of excommunication if she persisted.

In this ground-breaking memoir, Soline candidly shares her struggles, her dark nights of the soul and her ecstasies, as well as her decades-long effort to bring about an end to women’s exclusion from the priesthood. She is told again and again: ‘The door to women’s ordination was shut and would remain shut.’ And that was that.

 But as the Catholic Church continues its decline in weekly Mass attendance, its huge drop in male celibate priestly vocations and waning cultural significance, as it reels from decades of scandals due to child sexual abuse by clergy, it is becoming increasingly clear that the time for change is at hand. A Divine Calling is an inspirational story of hope, determination, courage and one woman’s passionate desire to make a difference.

Available on 24 September 2025 from

The LIffey Press, Ireland and worldwide

Also in Ireland  Books.ie

In UK, Pen and Sword Books

Amazon

"Out of Africa can rise a hope capable of reawakening the whole Church” — Stan Chu Ilo

In VoiceAfrique, Professor Stan Chu Ilo introduces his article thus:

"The Catholic Church faces its own exhaustion. For centuries, it seemed an unshakable moral anchor. Through Christendom and global missions, the papacy exerted extraordinary influence. Today, beneath its familiar rituals, the cracks are evident. Membership is shrinking in much of the West. Debates over sexuality, morality, and governance deepen divisions. The link between faith and everyday life weakens. In too many places, Catholic witness feels muted, leadership defensive, imagination tired. There is even a contest over which version of Catholicism defines the Church—an old struggle that intensified under Francis and resurfaced in the election of Pope Leo."

"The question is not whether the old order can be restored. It cannot. The deeper challenge is whether a new vision can emerge. Can Catholicism recover a space of hope and spiritual imagination strong enough to respond to this global crisis of history and modernity?"

Read the whole article