WOC Spreads Pink Smoke to Demand a Greater Presence of Women in the Church
WOC activists, Rome, Italy, May 8, 2025. X/ @toot5000
May 8, 2025 Hour: 10:41 am
‘Pink smoke is a cry for help that the cardinals cannot ignore,’ the Women’s Ordination Conference said.
On Thursday, the Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) called for greater participation of women in the Catholic Church, coinciding with the celebration of the conclave, through several events in Rome, including a pink smoke protest as a symbolic act against their exclusion from decision-making processes.
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The activists gathered in a park near the Vatican, with the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background, and, emulating the black or white smoke that thousands of faithful await these days in St. Peter’s Square, released a puff of pink smoke into the air to demand greater representation of women within Catholic institutions.
“While a group of 133 ordained men gather behind closed doors to make a momentous decision about the future of the Catholic Church, we, advocates for women’s ordination, release pink smoke over the Vatican to demand full equality for women in the Catholic Church,” said WOC Director Kate McElwee.
“Pink smoke is a cry for help that the cardinals cannot ignore,” she added, asserting that equality for women within the Church cannot wait.
Despite the fact that more than half of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics are women, “there is not a single woman present in the room deciding who will be the leader of the global Church,” McElwee noted.
Under the slogan “smoke out sexism,” WOC organized several protest actions during these days of the conclave to call out an institution that, according to them, systematically excludes women from decision-making processes.
“The exclusion of women from equal decision-making roles and from ordination is a scandal and a sin; a woman’s place is in the conclave,” McElwee demanded.
Since 1975, the Women’s Ordination Conference has been working to ensure that women can be ordained as deacons, priests, and bishops, and to achieve gender equality within the Catholic Church.
According to McElwee, Pope Francis “inspired a spirit of dialogue and great inclusion” of women in the Church, although she believes that this work remains “painfully incomplete,” and hopes that the next pontiff will “bravely embrace synodality and correct the injustice of women’s exclusion from ordained ministry.”
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
