Written by by Helen Burgess
Saturday 26th September
A small group of NBCW women joined the local parish of Our Lady Star of the Sea for a beautiful vigil celebration of Mass. It was good to meet the parish priest and the community.
Sunday 27th September
Day 2 of the conference started with a time of prayer, including using a Taizé chant as a response. The Taizé music united us all in prayer despite our language differences.
Talk 1: ‘Rooted and Rebellious: A Catholic Woman’s Journey to Participation and Authentic Community’
The first session was led by Alicja Baranowska from Poland, a member of Women’s Ordination Worldwide and the Tekla Association, where she is the coordinator of the ‘Women in the Church’ group of Poland’s Congress of Catholic Women and Men.
The title of her talk was ‘Rooted and Rebellious: A Catholic Woman’s Journey to Participation and Authentic Community’.
Alicja shared openly and courageously her journey to faith and her vocational discernment, which is ongoing. She acknowledged that the talk should have been given by Julia Osęka, who was the youngest participant at the Synod on Synodality.
Alicja started her talk by introducing us to the life of Ludmila Javorova. She described her as the ‘first female Roman Catholic priest’. During the communist regime in the Czech region of Moravia, she was ordained by Bishop Felix Davidek to serve women in prisons and labour camps. However, when the regime fell, her ordination was not recognised by the Vatican.
Alicja then went on to explain and share her own story, growing up in a traditional Polish Catholic family in the 1980s. However, when the Polish regime collapsed in the late 1980s, she was challenged by the relationship between the Church and politics. Her faith remained strong, but she questioned other practices that she witnessed. Her faith grew and developed under the guidance of the Jesuit community, and she learnt to reflect more deeply on Sacred Scripture and women such as Deaconess Phoebe in the New Testament. She moved to England and continued to be supported by the Jesuit community, welcoming their non-judgemental approach, especially around sexuality and gender.
More recently, she has worked in Brussels with the European Union. To speak at this conference, she needed to add a disclaimer that all the opinions she shared were her own and did not represent her employer. She is now part of a vibrant international English-speaking Catholic community. She described how she has continued to explore the role of women in the Church, particularly through Women’s Ordination Worldwide. This group has inspired and nurtured her faith; she has met many inspirational women and is herself exploring her calling further.
Talk 2: Has Synodality the Potential for Transformation for Women?
Dr Avril Baignet is Co-Founder and Director of the School for Synodality in the Diocese of Northampton, UK. Avril was also a facilitator at the Second Session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome in 2024.
Avril started her talk by acknowledging that the final documents of the Synod on Synodality stated:
“Women continue to encounter obstacles in obtaining a fuller recognition of their charisms, vocation and place in all the various areas of the Church’s life. This is to the detriment of serving the Church’s shared mission.” (Paragraph 60, Synod on Synodality, 2024)
Avril went on to share the findings of some round-table research she conducted with Catholic women leaders present at the Synod, as well as other Catholic and ecumenical women. She wanted to understand better the nature of the obstacles they had experienced at a personal, communal and institutional level. She emphasised the importance of Baptismal calling and dignity for everyone.
She summarised that, through her two small-scale studies, a series of themes relating to obstacles emerged, including:
- Lack of access to formation for women and the disparity with male access.
- Imaginaries: thinking about the spaces women would like to inhabit in the life of the Church.
- Reception of women’s voices: some of what was included in paragraph 60, and indeed paragraph 60 itself, was fought for and could have been rejected from the final document. It was only passed by 11 votes.
She also raised the hopeful prospect that a lay woman, Maria Montserrat Alvarado, is the first woman to be appointed to lead a dicastery, the Dicastery for Communication.
She shared the experience of a woman from Belgium, Veer Dusauchoit, who was part of a legal case relating to allowing Catholic women to study alongside men for diaconate formation. This did not include ordination. She was successful on the grounds of discrimination and received financial recompense, but still could not undertake the formation.
Avril also shared her notion of ‘Lived Catholicism’ and suggested four levels at which vocation can be experienced:
- Individual: Imagining women as people of vocation.
- Communal: Role models and mentors. What needs to change?
- Structural: Access to funding for formation.
- Prophetic: The many possibilities for vocation outside a male/clerical model.
She finished by reminding us of a quotation from paragraph 60 of the final document of the Synod:
“There is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the Church: what comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.”
Visit to Walsingham Abbey
In the afternoon, the group were taken on a tour of Walsingham Abbey, a tranquil spot where the medieval priory of Our Lady of Walsingham was situated until it was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538. The group learnt about its history and the visions of the Virgin Mary experienced there by Lady Richeldis de Faverches in 1061. She was instructed to build on the site a house similar to the house of Nazareth, in commemoration of the Annunciation. The site of the house, now in ruins, is marked by a special stone.
Afternoon Workshop: Organising for Change
Collecting all learning and inspiration and putting them into an action plan for Andante and member organisations
The workshop was led by Weronika Felcis, co-president of Andante, and Agnieszka Zarzynska, a member of CoCoA Andante Poland.
In the afternoon, we all worked in small language groups on a series of questions reflecting on future directions for Andante. We voted on content and preferences. These will be shared on the website soon.
Closing Plenary Session
We had a final plenary session before gathering for the Andante Mass and Liturgy in the Church of the Annunciation.