We must restore the powerful witness of women leaders to the Catholic lectionary

Excerpt:

My ears perked up last week when I learned that Pope Francis had authorized a “visitation” at the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments following the recent retirement of that office’s prefect, Cardinal Robert Sarah.

I couldn’t agree more with Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese’s opinion that this office “has done little to support badly needed liturgical reform.”

But it is not for want of trying on the part of reform-minded Catholics.

In 2008 a two-year campaign supported by nearly 20,000 Catholics worldwide asked the Synod of Bishops on the Word of God to restore biblical women leaders to lectionary texts from which their witness had been diminished or deleted. Full disclosure: I helped spearhead this campaign and was in Rome during the synod, albeit watching around the edges.