I have been following, with rapt interest, the events in Rome this past week. Women and men gathered in Rome to participate in a Jubilee for and about female ordination in the Catholic church. It was exciting and interesting and filled me with hope.
And also a bit of despair.
You see, this Jubilee coincided with the Pope’s Jubilee in much the same way many or our own OW events have coincided with General Conference. Of course, I couldn’t help but make constant comparisons in my head.
We have tried to attend the Priesthood Session of Conference (twice!), and we’ve been ignored.
We have provided pictures, documentation, and live demonstrations of the relationship between women and the priesthood throughout our church’s history, and we’ve been ignored.
We have sent letters and asked for meetings, and we’ve been ignored.
We have gathered testimony from hundreds of women about their eagerness to participate more fully in the church, and we stood outside the Church Administration Building with those letters for an entire weekend, and then we mailed those testimonies to multiple people inside… all of which has been ignored.
I am so excited for our Catholic sisters, who were able to meet with their church leaders and deliver their petitions to Pope Francis. Truly, it is so wonderful, and I shed happy tears on learning the news.
But also I shed some tears for me, and for my Mormon sisters. Because it is a stark reminder of all of the doors that have been closed to us.