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Pope’s audience for presentation of volume on women’s leadership
“Be a voice for women victims of abuse, violence and injustice”
“Let us not leave voiceless
the women victims of abuse, exploitation, marginalization and undue pressure….
Let us be a voice for their pain and strongly denounce the injustices to which they are subjected.” This was the Pope’s appeal made by the Pontiff during his audience with members of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation
and
the Strategic Alliance of Catholic Research Universities (SACRU),
Ob Saturday, 11th March 2023, in the Clementine Hall,
on the occasion of the presentation of a volume on women’s leadership.
MORE WOMEN LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD: Care as a Driver for Our Common Home
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1RBXx13Oac)
Dear friends,
I thank Professors Tarantola and Rector Anelli for their kind words, and I greet all of you, members of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation and of the network of SACRU Catholic Universities.
Our meeting takes place on the occasion of the presentation of the book “More Women’s Leadership for a Better World”. Caring as the Driver of our Common Home. This is a theme quite close to my heart: the importance of care.
It was one of the first messages I wanted to give to the Church from the very start of my pontificate, when I recalled the example of Saint Joseph, the loving protector of the Savior. The loving protector who cares.
Before turning briefly on some specific aspects of this work, I would like to emphasize a more general aspect. As we have heard, the present volume is the result of a remarkable variety of contributions, collected and elaborated through an unprecedented collaboration between some Catholic Universities scattered throughout the world and a Vatican Foundation entirely of lay people.
It is a new and significant process, in which the richness of the contents derives from the contribution of experiences, skills, sensitivities and different and complementary approaches. It is an example of multidisciplinarity, multiculturalism and the sharing of different sensibilities: these are important values, not only for a book, but also for a better world.
In this light, I would like to emphasise three aspects of caring as (1) women’s contribution of women to greater inclusiveness, (2) greater respect for others and (3) new ways of facing new challenges.
Firstly for greater inclusiveness.
The book discusses the problem of discrimination that often affects women, as well as other vulnerable groups in society. I have often insisted that diversity must never lead to inequality, but to grateful and mutual acceptance. True wisdom, with its many facets, is learned and lived by walking together, and only in this way does it become a generator of peace. Your research is therefore an invitation, thanks to women and in favor of women, not to discriminate but to integrate everyone, especially the most vulnerable economically, culturally, racially and gender-wise.
No one should be excluded: this is a sacred principle. In fact, the Creator’s project is an “essentially inclusive” project – always – which places at the centre “the inhabitants of the existential peripheries”. It is a project that, like a mother does, sees her children as the different fingers of her hand: always inclusive,.
Second contribution: more respect for others. Every person must be respected in his or her dignity and fundamental rights: education, work, freedom of expression, and so on. This is especially true for women, who are more vulnerable to violence and abuse.
I once heard a historian say how women came to wear jewelry – women like to wear jewelry, but now men also.
There was a civilization where there the custom was that when the husband of many wives arrived home, if he did not like one of them he would say to her: ” “You’re leaving now.” And she had to leave with what she was wearing. She couldn’t come in and get her things, no! your leaving now! That’s why – according to this story – women began to wear gold on them, and that’s where jewelry started. Maybe it’s a legend, but it’s interesting. For a long time now, women have been the first waste material. This is terrible. Everyone must respect their rights.
We cannot remain silent in the face of this scourge of our time. Women are being used. Yes, here, in a city! They pay you less: well, you’re a woman. Then, woe betide you with the belly, because if they see you pregnant you will not get the work. In fact, if they see you starting at work, they send you home.
It is one of the techniques that are used today in the big cities: discarding women, for example with motherhood. It is important to see this reality, it is a plague.
Let us not leave women without a voice – women who are victims of abuse, exploitation, marginalization and undue pressure, such as these I have said with work.
Let us give voice to their pain and strongly denounce the injustices to which they are subjected, often in contexts that deprive them of any possibility of defense and redemption.
But let us also give space to their actions, which are naturally and powerfully sensitive and oriented towards the defense of life in every state, in every age and in every condition.
And we come to the last point: meeting new challenges in new ways.
Creativity. The irreplaceable specificity of women’s contribution to the common good is undeniable. We see this already in Sacred Scripture, where it is often women who determine important turning points at decisive moments in the history of salvation.
Let us think of Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, Susanna, Ruth, culminating with Mary and the women who followed Jesus to the foot of the Cross, where, we note, only John remained of the men, the others all left. The courageous women were there.
In the history of the Church, then, we think of figures like Catherine of Siena, Josephine Bakhita, Edith Stein, Teresa of Calcutta and we also think of the women “next door”, whom we know with such heroism, carrying on difficult marriages, children with problems. The is the heroism of women. Beyond the stereotypes of a certain hagiographic style, they are impressive people for their determination, courage, fidelity, ability to suffer and to transmit joy, honesty, humility, tenacity.
In Buenos Aires, when I took the bus that went to a northwestern sector, where there were many parishes. The bus always passed near the prison and there was a Line of people who wanted to visit the prisoners that day: 90% were women, mothers, mothers who never abandon their son! Mothers. And this is the strength of a woman: silent strength, but of every day. Our history is literally full of women like this, both famous and the unknown— but not to God!—who carry forward the journey of families, societies and the Church; sometimes with problematic, vicious husbands… the children go on… We notice this also here, in the Vatican, where there are now many women who “work hard”, even in roles of great responsibility, thanks be to God. For example, since the Economic Advisor is a woman, things work better, here, much better.
And other places, where there are women, secretaries, the Council for the Economy, for example, were six cardinals and six lay people, all men. Now it has been renewed, two years ago, and of the lay people there is one man and five women, and it has begun to work because they have a different capacity: the possibility of action and also patience. Once a manager of the working world told a worker who had arrived at the head of the union, at that moment, with great authority – he had no father, only a mother, very poor, she did domestic work, they lived in a small house: the mother’s dormitory, and then a small room to eat and he slept in that room, he often got drunk at night.
He was 22-23 years old – he said that when his mother went out in the morning to work, to clean the houses, she stopped , looked at him: he was awake but pretended not to see, that he was asleep, looked at him and went away. “And my mother’s perseverance, of looking at me without reproaching or tolerating me, changed my heart one day, and so I got where I am”. Only a woman can do this; the father would have kicked him out.
We have to look at the way women act: it’s a great thing.
We are living in a time of epochal changes, that require adequate and convincing responses. In acknowledging the contribution made by women to these processes, I would like to mention one of them: the progressive development and use of artificial intelligence and the related delicate problem, connected to it, of the emergence of new and unpredictable power dynamics. This is a scenario that is largely unknown to us and for which predictions can only be guesses and approximations.
Well, women in this field have a lot to say. In fact, they know how to synthesize in a unique way, in their way of acting, three different languages: (1) the language of the mind, (2) the language of the heart and (3) the language of the hands. But they do it symphonically.
The woman, when she is mature, she thinks what she feels and does; she feels what he does and thinks: does what she feels and thinks: it is a harmony.
This is the genius of the woman: and she teaches men to do it, but it is woman who first reaches this harmony of expression, even of thinking with the three languages.
It is a synthesis that is unique to the human being and that the woman embodies in a wonderful way – I do not say exclusively but wonderfully and even primarily – no machine could achieve this, because it does not feel the heart beating inside her of a child she carries in her womb, it does not collapse, tired and happy, next to the bed of her children, she does not cry with pain and joy participating in the sorrows and joys of the people she loves. The husband works, sleeps and… goes on. And instead a woman does these things in a natural way, she does them in a unique way, because of her ability to take care. For this reason, as the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council wrote, we can say that “at a time when humanity is undergoing a […] profound transformation, women […] can do much to help mankind not to decline”.
With this conviction, I would like to conclude our meeting by making my own the words of Saint John Paul II in Mulieris Dignitatem: “The Church […] gives thanks for all women and for each one: for mothers, sisters, wives; for consecrated women, […] for women who work professionally, […] for all: […] in all the beauty and richness of their feminineness”.
Thank you, dear friends! Congratulations for this important research and best wishes for your work. I bless you. And please I ask you to pray for me. Thank you.
