The first National Synodal Assembly of the Church in Ireland has recommended that the bishops continue exploring the ministry of women, including the diaconate. The proposal received the support of 54% of the delegates in the vote on Saturday, October 17, according to The Irish Times and The Journal, ten months after the Vatican commission that studied the female diaconate ruled out admitting women to this degree of the sacrament of holy orders. The same assembly called on the universal Church for more respectful language when speaking about LGBT+ people. The proposals now go to the Irish Episcopal Conference, which, according to its own statement, is meeting this week to study them.
More than three hundred lay, priest, and religious delegates gathered in Gormanston, in County Meath, to vote on 35 proposals grouped into five pathways, according to the Episcopal Conference. Each delegate could mark each proposal as highly recommended, recommended, needing further discernment, or not recommended. The one calling for continued exploration of the ministry of women, including the diaconate, was considered highly recommended by 42% and recommended by 12%; 19% called for more discernment and 27% opposed it. The working document used by the delegates maintained that the question of women’s access to diaconal ministry remains open.
This is not the view of the commission that the Vatican entrusted to Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi. Its conclusions, made public on December 4, 2025, hold that the state of historical and theological research excludes the possibility of moving toward the admission of women to the diaconate understood as a degree of the sacrament of holy orders, an assessment that the commission says it maintains firmly in light of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium, although it notes that, unlike the case of priestly ordination, it does not yet allow for a definitive judgment to be formulated.
The proposal on language regarding homosexuality, included in the first pathway, calls on the universal Church to develop more respectful vocabulary and to give life when speaking about LGBT+ people. 41% of the delegates considered it highly recommended and 20% recommended it; 26% called for more discernment and only 13% opposed it, according to The Irish Times. Six out of ten delegates thus supported calling on Rome for a change in language about homosexuality.
The only proposal clearly rejected was the creation of a national office for women: 56% of the delegates did not recommend it, according to The Journal. The one calling for women to be more visible and valued in the liturgy and public prayer received the support of 61%, and the one making healing a priority of the synodal process received 89%.
The president of the Episcopal Conference, the Archbishop of Armagh, Eamon Martin, defended the process with a blunt diagnosis: “many of our parishes, and even our dioceses, are unsustainable with the current model and will struggle to survive”, he said, according to The Irish Times. In the episcopal statement, Martin recalled that it was the bishops who initiated the process and announced that some proposals could be implemented quickly while others would require more planning and resources. The Secretary General of the Synod, Cardinal Mario Grech, spoke by video and warned, according to The Journal, of the danger that managing decline could become the pastoral paradigm.
The recommendations are not binding: it is up to the bishops to decide which ones to adopt. The Irish synodal path began in 2021; in 2022, the national synthesis already included calls to open ordained ministry to women and to review celibacy, and in October 2025 a pre-synodal assembly was held in Kilkenny.
What the Vatican commission closed short of a definitive judgment, the Irish assembly returns to the bishops as an open question.
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