Pope Francis criticizes machismo, says women in leadership have improved the Vatican

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In saying goodbye to the three-day trip to Bahrain, in the Middle East, Pope Francis said on Sunday (6) that women in leadership positions contributed to the Vatican to improve and proved that they can outperform men in the same positions. .

“I realized that every time a woman is given a position [de responsabilidade] in the Vatican, things get better,” said the pontiff aboard the papal plane. “Women are a gift. God did not create man and then give him a puppy to play with. He created man and woman.”

The statement represents a thinly veiled critique of machismo in the region. The pontiff was responding to a question about the role of women at the forefront of protests in Iran, but he declined to comment on the demonstrations that erupted after the death in September of a 22-year-old Kurdish girl, three days after she was arrested by the moral police. for allegedly not wearing the hijab, the Islamic veil, properly.

Regarding the Vatican, Pope Francis said that “things have changed for the better” after appointments of women to management positions, including that of Sister Raffaella Petrini, deputy governor of Vatican City and responsible for approximately 2,000 employees.

Francis also cited the impact of five women he appointed to a department that oversees Vatican finances.

“This is a revolution because women know how to find the right way forward,” the Argentine pontiff said, adding that “there was a lot of machismo” in the Catholic Church and society in general.

Leader of the Catholic Church and head of state of Vatican City, Pope Francis has also appointed women to the posts of Deputy Foreign Minister, Director of the Vatican Museums, Deputy Head of the Vatican Press Office, as well as four counselors. of the Synod of Bishops, which prepares large meetings.

Pope Francis opened what aims to be the largest democratic consultation movement in the history of the Catholic Church Created last year, the synod of synodality (the Church’s way of being and acting) is the largest democratic consultation movement in the history of the Church, marked by centuries of rigid hierarchy, conservatism and little transparency.

The move is expected to help the Vatican accelerate greater female participation in decision-making and step up its embrace of groups still marginalized by traditional Catholicism — from homosexuals to remarried divorcees.

At the end of the discussions, however, the decisions follow as usual: respecting the traditional hierarchy —despite the democratic nature of the public consultation, the Pope will have the final word on the proposed topics.

In Bahrain, the pope also condemned the death penalty and defended religious freedom. The Arab country, a Sunni emirate since the 18th century, is accused of persecuting Shias and violating the human rights of prisoners.

On Sunday, the pope also prayed for “martyred Ukraine” and called for the war to end after more than eight months of conflict. Earlier, Franisco called on religious authorities in Bahrain to help bring the world back from “the edge of the precipice” and to oppose a new arms race that, according to the pontiff, is reshaping the spheres of influence formed in the period of the Cold War. .

This is the second trip by a pope to the Arabian Peninsula – the first, also made by Francis, was in 2019, to the United Arab Emirates. The pontiff’s current visit has drawn attention to conflicts between the Bahraini regime and the country’s Shi’ite community, responsible for leading large pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring in 2011.

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