Dr Richard DeClue
January 8, 2026
Way back in 2020, Pope Francis established a commission to study the question of the history and possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate. This was not the first committee tasked with this purpose. Rather, this commission, composed of five women and five men, “continued the work of a previous group,” as Gina Christian reports.
The commission finally issued a summary report in the form of a letter to Pope Leo XIV. It was submitted to the newly elected pontiff in September but was published at the pope’s request on December 4, 2025.
Unsurprisingly, based on its study of the question, the commission voted against admitting women to the sacrament of holy orders via the diaconate. Famously, Pope Francis himself gave an emphatic no to ordained female deacons in an interview with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, which aired on May 20, 2024. That clip has become a meme across social media.
In this study report, the commission’s president, Giuseppe Cardinal Petrocchi, gives a summary of major points of discussion, including details of votes taken at various stages in the process for or against certain statements. Back in 2021, the commission unanimously voted on this thesis: “In the current state of historical research and of our knowledge of the biblical and patristic testimonies, it can reasonably be affirmed that the female diaconate, which developed unequally in the different parts of the Church, was not understood as the simple female equivalent of the male diaconate and does not seem to have had a sacramental character.”
More: https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/study-commission-says-no-to-a-female-diaconate/
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