The Vatican has published the Interim Reports of the Ten Study Groups created in 2024 to continue the work of the Synod on Synodality, a process that advances amid thematic expansions, methodological reviews, and a growing diversity of lines of work. The reports, disseminated on November 17, show the current state of each group and confirm that the synodal itinerary will extend until the end of 2025. Pope Leo XIV has set December 31, 2025 as the deadline for the delivery of the final documents, after the death of Francis and the election of the new Pontiff caused delays in the planned calendar.
Although the Vatican presents these texts as an “advance” within the process, their length and the heterogeneity of the themes reveal a complex panorama, where pastoral care, ecclesial structure, and doctrinal issues intermingle at very different levels of priority. The general feeling is that of a process that keeps adding layers without closing the fundamental issues that concern a significant part of the people of God.
The continuation of a debate that synodality fails to close
The theme of women’s participation in the life of the Church remains one of the points most charged with expectations within the synodal process. Study Group 5, coordinated by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, has spent months gathering testimonies, studying documents, and analyzing experiences of women in pastoral and curial positions of responsibility. However, despite the breadth of the material gathered, the most sensitive issues remain open, especially the debate on women’s access to the diaconate.
The interim report shows a notable effort to integrate diverse voices and recognize the historical contribution of women. Testimonies from nuns, theologians, and laywomen in leadership roles are added to reflections on female figures in Christianity, tensions arising from clericalism, and the limits between participation and sacramentality. But these elements, though valuable, do not resolve the central question: whether the Church has or does not have the authority to confer the sacrament of holy orders—in its diaconal degree—on women.
Synodality and sacrament: two realms that cannot be mixed
The report recalls that Francis reactivated the Commission for the Study of the Female Diaconate, but omits mention of the fundamental doctrinal difficulty: the diaconate belongs to the sacrament of holy orders, which the Church has consistently taught as reserved to men. The history of the so-called “deaconesses” in the early Church does not equate to the sacramental degree of the diaconate as it exists today, and the magisterium has explained this repeatedly.
Presenting this issue as an open possibility can lead to a misreading of the tradition, and above all to a functionalist approach according to which ecclesial service would be measured by access to the sacramental order. The female vocation does not need to be clericalized to be valued; the insistence on this point expresses more of a cultural pressure than a call from the Spirit.