Catholic women find that Catholic structures won't support them.
The editor of the Vatican women’s magazine, Lucetta Scaraffia, has announced that she and her all-female editorial team are to suspend its publication. In a letter to Pope Francis, which she has also made public, Scaraffia explains: “We are throwing in the towel because we feel surrounded by an atmosphere of distrust and progressive delegitimisation.”
The magazine, Donne Chiesa Mondo (Women Church World), is published by the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. Scaraffia blames increasing interference and control by the Osservatore’s new editor, Andrea Monda, and says a change in editorial direction has taken away her team’s autonomy.
Describing the wide-ranging scope of the magazine, which includes contributors from different faiths as well as historical, biblical and theological perspectives, she wrote: “We often felt like miners who discovered precious metal strands and brought them to light and to the knowledge of all: a true human and universal richness, and in this sense ‘Catholic’.”
Last month, Scaraffia called for ‘a complete revision of the Catholic culture and of the training of future priests'. Scaraffia has maintained her position as one of the few women with a significant voice in the Vatican by way of a precarious balancing act between speaking out on issues of concern while refraining from challenging church teaching. But in recent years she has become increasingly bold. Last month she wrote a strongly worded article on the sexual abuse of women, including religious sisters, by clergy, referring to “imposed abortions” and “children not recognised by priests”. She called for “a complete revision of the Catholic culture and of the training of future priests”. Soon after that, Pope Francis admitted that clerics had sexually abused and even enslaved nuns.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/27/vatican-magazine-church-pope-francis-lucetta-scaraffia