Women's empowerment key to society, nuncio says

"Women and girls must be guaranteed their full enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including equal access to education and health," he emphasized.

Sadly he forgot to include religious rights.

"Regarding women's economic stability, he said women need to have access to land as well as credit facilities and financial services.

The archbishop also urged families and communities to support women's entrepreneurship. "The ethical dimension of their development and economic empowerment as well as their service to the family must not be overlooked," he added."

Let me suggest that the nuncio support Mary's Pence that has been financially promoting social justice and the empowerment of women in the Americas for more than 20 years. Mary's Pence new Espera Funds is a pilot program that allows networks of poor women in Central American countries to have access to and control of credit. With Mary's Pence grants groups of women start and sustain their own businesses. The Espera Fund grants are helping women to grow and have more control over their own destinies and to improve the lives and futures of their children. Mary's Pence is collaborating with grassroots women and learning from them how best to solve their problems and bring about social change in their impoverished countries.

consilia karli

Mary's Pence - Funding Women. Changing Lives.
http://www.maryspence.org/whatwedo-espera.html

Until women in the Roman Catholic Church are treated as equal children of God by the patriarchal hierarchy, the words of the Vatican are worthless, insulting and evil.

He said the Vatican "notes with concern" the ongoing "discrimination, exploitation and oppression of women and girls."

"Women and girls must be guaranteed their full enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including equal access to education and health," he emphasized.

This from a member of the longest standing "boy's club" in the world.

It is astonishing that such officials fail to see that the denial of one of the key sacraments, the one which leads to leadership in the Church, to women is actually not just part of the problem but a primary antecedant.

Until that changes, all the Nuncio is doing is to re-define "a woman's place."

Real progress will come when societies of men cease to attempt to define a woman's place but instead understand that it is up to every woman (as with every man) to work with her Deity (or not) to define 'her place.'

"Women and girls must be guaranteed their full enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including equal access to education and health," he emphasized.

LEAD BY EXAMPLE, Archbishop, not by pious platitudes and diplomatic lip-service.
EMPOWER the WOMEN in your CHURCH!

No sexual, no religious guarantees. I guess he means women must be empowered as far as it's useful to men.

He means nothing by what he says. The Church itself violates women at will. No one will be listening to him until the Church practices what it preaches. Begin by allowing priests to marry; in other words, show the respect for marriage, women, and children, that you proclaim. Add to that the ordination of women. Then start paying all church employees at least a living wage that allows women (and men) to support their families and raise the children that you say you respect. Also rid the Vatican of Cardinal Law and the church of any bishop who has helped abuse the most vulnerable of God's creation by hiding pedophile priests. Either that, or stop your silly ranting against abortion, because you obviously have no more respect for human life than those whom you condemn. Stop focusing on sex and start focusing on economic and political justice. That ought to take care of stage one. Stage two would include ridding the church of priests who physically and sexually abuse women, and ridding the church of those priests who steal from the poor, that is, mostly women with young children, either by buying lavish homes in exclusive neighborhoods like some bishops, taking lavish trips under the guise of building church buildings that nobody wants or needs, or by outright taking cash from the till, to name a few of the ways in which women are abused. That should get stage two under way.

With the current state of affairs in the Roman Church, it is too easy to see what is lacking in Archbishop Migliore's statement. Women have no say over their reproductive rights; only (sexually) "Frustrated Fathers" do. Women have no say over their role in Church governance; only the "Cold-Hearted Curia" does. Women have no rights to review the current Apostolic visitation to the U.S. women religious; only the "Mitred Males" do. Is it no wonder that our Church leaders have become laughable? But, they are above criticism! (As Cardinal Schoenborn found out!)

This sound-good statement reflects the standard operating procedure from the Vatican i.e., speak out of both sides of your mouth, giving a false impression of the real agenda. Have they no integrity? No respect for the intelligence of the faithful and/or the world at large.
This Pope is better at this than any of his minions. The subject could be women or child abuse or liturgy changes or disciplining priests or secularism or nuns or Vatican II or desire to work with other churches or anti-semitism- whatever- under the present Pope, the curia pretends to do one thing while doing another.
I expect the Pope is sprucing up his 20 yard long cappa magna at this very moment waiting until we all say "uncle" and agree with him-even if we do not and it is not for our own good. He is living in a very distant past. The world, including the Catholic world is not going there.
This regime in Rome has no intention of giving anything to women except the right to do as the curia tells them.
We are highly discardable.

"Women and girls must be guaranteed their full enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including equal access to education and health," he emphasized - and the Catholic Church continues its investigation of women's religious orders and classifies the "ordination of women" as a cause for immedicate excommunication along with sex offenders!

I totally agree with your statement if it was spoken by someone who honestly believes what they preach; and, if that is what you believe, then please take your view to the Vatican to pass equality for women in the Church.

kathleen r

Then why are there not canons stating that rape and incest are grave sins? Why is spouse abuse a "gray zone" for anullments? Abused women are "encouraged" to seek anullments but they may not get them. I've heard more sermons on murder than I have spouse abuse. It's not like suburban America is filled with murderers. I doubt that the abortion clinics are filled with practicing Catholic women like the priests think.

If women's empowerment is the key to society, then contraception is the key to that empowerment.

Nowhere in his address was been any acknowledgement of the unique role of contraception in the empowerment of women.