Tony Flannery

I have been full of admiration for Pope Francis during his U.S. trip.  I thought his addresses to Congress, the United Nations and the U.S. bishops were excellent.  But on the way home in the plane, during the press briefing, he addressed the issue of womens ordination.  This is how it was reported by Joshua McElwee of the NCR:

“”Pope Francis has again forcefully rejected the possibility of female priests in the Catholic church, saying simply that his predecessor Pope John Paul II decided “that cannot be done.”

In a homily to hundreds of thousands at an outdoor Mass packing Philadelphia’s iconic Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Francis said that Jesus’ disciples were also afraid of new things — but that Jesus broke down all barriers to allow the Spirit to do its work.

“Jesus encountered hostility from people who did not accept what he said and did,” the pope told the crowds, many of whom had waited for long hours to participate in the last of his three public Masses while in the U.S.

So, Jack McClure, one of my fellow panelist at the WOW conference – the only one still in ministry- has now been forbidden to minister in the diocese where he lived and worked, San Francisco. This edict has come from the bishop there, Cordileone. Archbishop Cordileone is certainly not in tune with the message of Pope Francis, so this development, though immensely regrettable, is not a surprise.
The last speaker at our conference was Sr.