“How much damage we have done, as men, by endorsing a status of superiority,” said Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who heads the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
Newsroom ( 16/06/2022 7:40 PM Gaudium press) On his address to the World Observatory for Women, promoted by the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations (UMOFC), Cardinal Marc Ouellet remarked that “there is no complete image of what is human when only the masculine is considered predominant and the only thing relevant. For centuries, we have suffocated the feminine peculiarity.”
The results of the Observatory’s first report looking into women in Latin America and the Caribbean and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected them were presented at the gathering.
Ouellet hopes that the Observatory will introduce “in its observing the light of faith. Faith is a method of knowledge that helps perceive the ultimate meeting of reality through the diversity of information. Faith does not substitute nor violate reason, but expands its horizon, making it more sapiential, cordial, and deep down, more empathic.”
The goal of the first survey by the Observatory was “to give visibility to women who seem invisible,” UMOFC President Maria Lia Zervino explained. The report is the product of qualitative work in three parts, with data, expert commentary, and surveys conducted in 23 countries.
The survey, presented last Saturday to Pope Francis in a private audience, verified that the pandemic had worsened the condition of women in terms of gender-based violence, trafficking and forced migration, poverty, access to health, and education, exacerbating the already existing gaps and injustices.
Despite these inequalities, said Monica Santamarina De Robles, treasurer of UMOFC, “women have shown great strength and resilience and have reinvented ways to sustain themselves.”
The proposals for improving women’s lives include the creation of spaces for accompaniment and help among women, the formation of women’s leadership (including in the pastoral field), a broadening of the representation of women in public spaces, humanizing relationships through intergenerational circles of conversation, and continuing to investigate structural and symbolic violence against women and broadcast the findings.
Sister Alessandra Smerilli, secretary of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development and head of the Vatican Commission on COVID-19, stressed the importance of the Observatory: “If we cannot observe and measure, we cannot improve reality.”
“If the economy were a woman,” she said, “it would really care about the common good and the care of the human being. The pandemic has put a spotlight on the situation of women with respect to access to food, land, technology, education, agriculture, health. We need to promote training, new laws and new spaces for women’s participation, in a collaboration between church, governments, social movements and NGOs.”
During the first quarter of 2022, the group began work in Africa with training in Nairobi, Kenya, for women to become social correspondents capable of listening and sensitizing other women in their own communities.
“The feminine is the key to reading the present and the future of our society. The new feminine protagonist must be built and men are called to be an adequate help for the realization of women,” said Ouellet during his introductory remarks.
Quoting Pope Francis, he said that women are the “protagonists of the epochal change” the world is facing. “The word protagonist could not be better chosen. The woman has always been a protagonist in history, however, it has often been made invisible. Many have a mentality installed in their conscience that does not allow them to recognize the dignity of every woman, and instead objectify and exploit them.”
Peruvian Archbishop Miguel Cabrejos, president of the Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) – the sponsor of the study – said that “we feel pain and shame for the situation of women that emerges from the survey.”
“Many women in Latin America are victims of gender-based violence, which along with injustice and inequality has been exacerbated during the pandemic. The damage to physical and mental health has been countless: Xenophobia and racism are on the rise, and the phenomenon of trafficking run by criminal organizations has grown.,” the archbishop said.
In contrast, he said, in the ecclesial world in Latin America, many women have assumed essential positions in the pastoral management of parishes and also within CELAM.
(Via Crux Now)
Compiled by Raju Hasmukh
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(Scriptural Note – Ephesians 5 – Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
1 Peter – Likewise, you wives,[be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behaviour of their wives, when they see your reverent and chaste behaviour. Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and wearing of robes, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. So once the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are now her children if you do right and let nothing terrify you.
Likewise, you husbands, live considerately with your wives, bestowing honour on the woman as the weaker sex, since you are joint heirs of the grace of life, in order that your prayers may not be hindered. )
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