{"id":62215,"date":"2025-10-01T20:00:58","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T18:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/eng\/?p=62215"},"modified":"2025-10-01T20:00:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T18:00:58","slug":"the-pastor-blackmails-leo-women-priests-or-no-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/eng\/2025\/10\/01\/the-pastor-blackmails-leo-women-priests-or-no-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pastor Blackmails Leo: \u00abWomen Priests Or No Unity\u00bb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-129479\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/papa_donne_prete.webp\" alt=\"Leo women priests\" width=\"602\" height=\"316\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><i>The incendiary words of <strong>Rita Famos<\/strong>, the first woman president of the Reformed Church. The unity of Christians reduced to a <strong>political<\/strong> and <strong>blackmailing instrument<\/strong>.<\/i><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">If <strong>the unity of Christians<\/strong> is reduced to a <strong>political bargaining chip<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This is the sense of the recent declaration by the president of the Swiss Reformed Church, <mark><strong>Rita Famos<\/strong><\/mark>, the first woman to hold this role.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Pastor of Zurich<\/strong>, Famos was elected after the resignation of Pastor <strong>Locher<\/strong>, 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The <strong>Evangelical Reformed Church<\/strong> of Switzerland unites 24 cantonal and national evangelical reformed churches and the United Methodist Church.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>The Vatican&#8217;s attempt regarding the unity of Christians<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><i>\u00abAs long as the Catholic Church refuses to guarantee <strong>women&#8217;s equality in all offices<\/strong>, no pope can legitimately claim a primacy for all Christian women and men\u00bb<\/i>, <strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/katholisch.de\/artikel\/63902-kirchenpraesidentin-sieht-ehrenprimat-des-papstes-kritisch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">she declared<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The statement is set in the context of the debate on the document \u201c<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.christianunity.va\/content\/unitacristiani\/en\/cardinal-koch\/2025\/Conferenze\/en3.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Der Bischof von Rom<\/a><\/strong>\u201d promoted by the Catholic Dicastery for the Promotion of Christian Unity to propose a <strong>new mode<\/strong> of papal primacy in an ecumenical key.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The text proposes acceptance of the Pope as an <strong>&#8220;honorary head&#8221;<\/strong>, a new understanding of papal primacy.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>The blackmailing of Leo XVI over women priests<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But evidently the pastor <strong>cares little<\/strong>, except as an object of <strong>blackmail<\/strong>: without women priests, no unity.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/2025\/09\/18\/leone-xiv-tra-genocidio-fiducia-supplicans-e-messa-in-latino\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">From the latest statements<\/a><\/em><\/strong> of <strong>Leo XVI<\/strong> it has become clear that on the Catholic side <strong>there is no yielding<\/strong> to the logic of blackmail.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On one hand Prevost expressed the willingness to <i>\u00abcontinue <strong>in the footsteps of Francis<\/strong> by appointing women to some leadership roles at various levels in the life of the Church\u00bb<\/i>. An initiative that we consider <strong>meritorious<\/strong> and that <strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/2025\/01\/14\/prefetto-donna-il-canonista-nessuna-confusione-normativa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">we have already addressed<\/a><\/em><\/strong> with canonist Rosario Vitale.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On the other hand, Leo XIV has maintained the traditional teaching on the question of <strong>female ordination<\/strong>, stating that <i>\u00abfor the moment <strong>I have no intention of changing<\/strong> the Church&#8217;s teaching on the subject\u00bb<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Some controversy understandably arose because of that <strong>&#8220;for the moment&#8221;<\/strong>. It is precisely the communicative risk of interviews which, by their nature, require dialoguing <strong>and informal<\/strong> statements that, on these issues, risk unnecessary misunderstandings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The incendiary words of Rita Famos, the first woman president of the Reformed Church. The unity of Christians reduced to a political instrument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":294,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1981,1982,1983,1980],"class_list":["post-62215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-female-ordination","tag-protestants-versus-catholics","tag-rita-famos","tag-women-priests"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Pastor Blackmails Leo: \u00abWomen Priests Or No Unity\u00bb - UCCR<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The words of Rita Famos, the first woman president of the Reformed Church. 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