Pope Leo XIV has chosen to stay silent in response to the first insurrection of his papacy: Scores of female preachers have defied church law by preaching at Mass in the first week of his tenure.
“We are simply unstoppable!” the Catholic Women’s Association of Germany (KfD) declared in a statement, trumpeting the success of the sixth annual Women Preachers’ Day(s) event organized to coincide with the feasts of St. Catherine of Siena and St. Junia from April 29 to May 17.
“Every year, more women participate in the Women Preachers’ Day,” said KfD’s spiritual director Ulrike Göken-Huismann. “Many women in the Catholic Church know they are called to interpret and proclaim the Word of God; they are ready to follow their calling.”
Despite Rome’s laws strictly forbidding laymen and women from preaching during Mass, last year, 180 Catholic women nationwide preached more than 200 sermons during services.
The Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law (767 §1) states that “the homily, which is part of the liturgy itself and is reserved [only] to a priest or deacon.”
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal expressly bans lay preachers, stating:
The homily should ordinarily be given by the priest celebrant himself. He may entrust it to a concelebrating priest or occasionally, according to circumstances, to the deacon, but never to a layperson.
The Congregation for Divine Worship, in its instructional document Redemptionis Sacramentum, specifically prohibits “laypersons from preaching within the Mass.” It applies the rule “also to seminarians, students of theological disciplines” and “pastoral assistants,” adding: “nor is there to be any exception for any other kind of layperson, or group, or community, or association.”
“For official church representatives, man-made canon law still takes precedence over charisms with which women and men are equally endowed,” Göken-Huismann said. “Hence, the KfD never tires of pointing this out, for example, with the Women Preachers’ Day.”
The KfD is demanding full equality between women and men and women’s access to all services and offices in the Catholic Church. It laments that the Church’s magisterium continues to deny women the sacramental ministry of deacon and priest, even declaring it impossible.
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