SÃO PAULO – A document released earlier this month showed that the commission in charge of the elaboration of the Amazonian Rite will include in its final proposition a request for the ordination of women deacons.

The text, a seven-page summary of a longer document released in 2024 – which contains most of the suggestions for the new rite and theological debates about them – was published on the website of the Latin American Ecclesial Council on Apr. 5.

It also includes two other controversial ideas that emerged during the preparation of the Synod for the Pan-Amazon region, the ordination of married men who have leadership roles in Amazonian communities, the so-called viri probati, and that priests who left the clergy in order to get married can resume their ministries.

“That text summarizes the landmark document we released last year. The idea is that the dioceses will now revise it, so the commissions can finalize the work within a few months,” Brazilian-born Father Agenor Brighenti, in charge of the commissions’ work, told Crux.

Those propositions appear in the fourth part of the document, which deals with the configuration of the Church in the Amazonian Rite. The text says that “a rite has an underlying ecclesiology” and that the Amazonian Church wants to be a Church “that is integrated to the life and the struggles of the peoples” and that “knows the culture and the history of its peoples,” learning their “languages, chants, instruments, rites, and costumes.”

“In the Amazonian churches, lay people, especially the women, have a preponderant role. […] A church with an Amazonian face requires the stable presence of mature lay leaders, endowed with authority, who know the cultures and the ways of living in community in each location, in order to allow for the development of an ecclesial culture in itself, one that is markedly lay,” the document reads.

The text says that the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia discusses the need to rethink the profiles of the ministries in each particular church in order to “express the protagonistic role of lay people, especially the women.”

“Among the vital challenges that the Church faces in the Amazon is the impossibility of the communities celebrating the Eucharist every week. That’s why the Amazonian Rite suggests the ordination of viri probati, originated in communitates probatae. It also suggests that the priests who left their ministry to get married can, if they wish, resume their ministry,” the document goes on.

The text says it’s urgent that in the Amazonian Church “ministries are promoted and trusted to women and men in an equitable way.” Men and women must be granted the power to officiate the sacraments, baptizing and celebrating marriages. It must be created an instituted ministry of “female community leader” and women must be ordained deacons.

“For an authentic Amazonian Rite, it’s essential that women can, in a symmetric and complementary way, occupy spaces as preachers and officiants of sacraments, as well as in the organization and the structures of the Church,” the document affirms.

According to Bishop Eugenio Coter of Pando, Bolivia, one of the coordinators of the elaboration of the Amazonian Rite, the commissions haven’t argued for the legitimacy of the ordination of women deacons, given that it’s a matter that it’s up to the universal Church to analyze.

“In part, it corresponds to an acknowledgement of the women’s role in the celebratory spaces. It’s coherent to the logic of the women’s presence in the Amazonian communities. But it’s something that surpasses the Amazonian Ecclesial Conference due to its doctrinal nature,” Coter told Crux.

He recalled that some ecclesial segments objected to the ordination of women deacons arguing that it would be an incentive to a kind of clericalism. He doesn’t agree with such a thesis.

“That corresponds to saying that the sacrament of the order creates a clerical mindset. I don’t think so. It’s a lack of understanding of the sacrament of the order,” Coter argued.

Concerning the viri probati, Coter emphasized that it’s also something typical of the Amazonian context to expect that an authority is a married man and knows how to guide his family.

“The ability to keep a mature and stable relationship is part of the dignity of the authorities, otherwise that leader causes mistrust,” he explained.

Coter recalled that the final document of the Synod for the Pan-Amazon region included a request from the bishops for the ordination of married men.

“It has never been answered. That’s also a subject that surpasses our capabilities. So, we can only hope that Rome can assume it’s valid for the Amazon region,” he said.

Coter said that those community leaders would receive the adequate education in order to be ordained, with no possible differentiation between them and regular celibate presbyters.

“We already have the experience of the Eastern Churches regarding that matter. We don’t hear anybody say that there’s any difference between married priests and the others. We just have to ensure that those men will be theologically and pastorally prepared to guide their communities,” Coter argued.

Those suggestions have provoked controversy in the Vatican since the Synod of the Amazon, in 2019. In regard to the possibility of ordaining women deacons, Pope Francis directly ruled it out in an interview with CBS in May of 2024.

In the opinion of religion sociologist Francisco Borba Ribeiro Neto, a Catholic activist who formerly headed the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo’s Center of Faith and Culture, those propositions emerged in the Amazon Synod and were defeated in the universal context of the Church – and now their promoters are trying to insist on them once again.

When it comes to women deacons, Ribeiro Neto argued that it’s a false solution, given that “women in poor communities don’t want to be priests.”

“They have their role and they’re okay with it. It’s much more a need for some nuns and missionaries who are displeased with the subalternity they unjustly face in the Church,” he told Crux.

In Ribeiro Neto’s opinion, it’s unquestionable that there’s a problem in recognizing the value of women inside the Church as an institution.

“But ordaining them is not a solution. It would be almost impossible to ordain all of them and a new problem would emerge, the differences between ordained and non-ordained religious women,” he said.

Ribeiro Neto recalled that Francis has always expressed that priesthood is not an honor, but a humble position of somebody who serves the others.

“If that’s the case, why would anyone struggle to be granted that position? Only because that person sees priesthood as an honor,” he said.

The issue of the viri probati – accompanied with the reintegration of married priests – is an inadequate vision of the matter of celibacy, according to Ribeiro Neto.

“The idea of revoking celibacy has also been defeated in the Church. Nowadays, Catholic communities in general don’t think about it. The cultural context regarding marriage has changed over the past decades and that issue became secondary in the Church,” he said.

The promoters of those ideas know they will not be implemented, Ribeiro Neto argued, but they insist on them anyway in order to position themselves as some kind of moral winners.

“It does not make sense to debate the merit of issues whose conclusions cannot be applied due to the current political conditions. That’s the case,” he said.

With the death of Pope Francis, the chances of those suggestions being approved are even lower, he added.