WelCom October 2022
The Vatican is unlikely to make any statement on the possibility of women being ordained to the diaconate in the Roman Catholic Church until after the international bishop’s Synod on Synodality next year, says international expert Dr Phyllis Zagano. Dr Zagano was one of 12 scholars appointed by Pope Francis in 2016 to the commission to study the diaconate as it existed in the early Church to ascertain the possibility of women deacons. The Pope said their research was inconclusive and in 2020 reconvened a new commission to examine the question.