The incendiary words of Rita Famos, the first woman president of the Reformed Church. The unity of Christians reduced to a political and blackmailing instrument.

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If the unity of Christians is reduced to a political bargaining chip.

This is the sense of the recent declaration by the president of the Swiss Reformed Church, Rita Famos, the first woman to hold this role.

Pastor of Zurich, Famos was elected after the resignation of Pastor Locher, who had been in office for more than 9 years, following accusations of harassment by some collaborators and the revelation of his relationship with a pastor, a member of the executive of the Protestant Church of Switzerland.

The Evangelical Reformed Church of Switzerland unites 24 cantonal and national evangelical reformed churches and the United Methodist Church.

 

The Vatican’s attempt regarding the unity of Christians

«As long as the Catholic Church refuses to guarantee women’s equality in all offices, no pope can legitimately claim a primacy for all Christian women and men», she declared.

The statement is set in the context of the debate on the document “Der Bischof von Rom” promoted by the Catholic Dicastery for the Promotion of Christian Unity to propose a new mode of papal primacy in an ecumenical key.

The text proposes acceptance of the Pope as an “honorary head”, a new understanding of papal primacy.

 

The blackmailing of Leo XVI over women priests

But evidently the pastor cares little, except as an object of blackmail: without women priests, no unity.

From the latest statements of Leo XVI it has become clear that on the Catholic side there is no yielding to the logic of blackmail.

On one hand Prevost expressed the willingness to «continue in the footsteps of Francis by appointing women to some leadership roles at various levels in the life of the Church». An initiative that we consider meritorious and that we have already addressed with canonist Rosario Vitale.

On the other hand, Leo XIV has maintained the traditional teaching on the question of female ordination, stating that «for the moment I have no intention of changing the Church’s teaching on the subject».

Some controversy understandably arose because of that “for the moment”. It is precisely the communicative risk of interviews which, by their nature, require dialoguing and informal statements that, on these issues, risk unnecessary misunderstandings.