Christopher White is the Vatican correspondent for NCR. His e-mail address is cwhite@ncronline.org. Follow him on Twitter: @cwwhiteNCR.
Prior to moving to Rome in August 2021, he served as NCR's national correspondent, where his award winning reporting included coverage of the Catholic vote during the 2020 campaign and the election of President Joe Biden.
He holds a master's degree in ethics and society from Fordham University and a bachelor's degree in politics, philosophy and economics from The King's College. His work has appeared in Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Forbes, Foreign Policy, New York Daily News, International Business Times, among many other print and online publications. He has regularly appeared on television and radio programs, including CNN, NPR, RTE and BBC and is a Vatican analyst for NBC and MSNBC news.
Pope Francis on April 26 dramatically expanded participation in the Vatican's upcoming Synod of Bishops to include lay men and women, for the first time granting them a right to be appointed as full voting members.
The Mercedarian sister is the only woman and only nonordained member of the seven-person commission tasked with organizing the upcoming synod meetings in Rome. But despite being in the minority, she is unintimidated.
An ancient Japanese art form repairs broken vessels with gold, not hiding the damage. The tradition illustrates Pope Francis' call to "to go to the margins" because they are also places of possibility.
UISG's plenary became a "sacred space to share about our vulnerabilities as leaders of congregations," Sr. Nadia Coppa said. "Vulnerability is part of our lives as consecrated women, and we have to embrace it, not remove it."
At the end of UISG plenary in Rome, sisters shared this pledge: "I commit myself to live vulnerable synodality through service as a leader, animating it within the community, together with the people of God."
With a wave of new appointments of religious sisters inside the Vatican, Pope Francis is making room for more women religious to have a permanent seat at the table. Sisters spoke about the importance of these changes.
The design for Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz's sculpture, titled "Let the Oppressed Go Free," is inspired, in part, by a 19th-century Canossian religious sister, now saint, Josephine Bakhita.
With the listening stage of the synod on synodality underway, the two-hour conversation on Dec. 16 aimed to amplify the voices of Catholic women from across the globe, with panelists from Africa, Australia and Europe.
As the first phase of the newly revamped synod process begins, Sister Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the Vatican's office of the Synod of Bishops, delivered a talk in which she described the pope's vision of a more relational church. "The focus is no longer first on the primacy at the top of the pyramidal view," she said.
"An economy without human trafficking is an economy of care," Comboni Missionary Sr. Gabriella Bottani said at a discussion aimed at including young people in the fight against modern day slavery. Bottani described the effort as a call to care for "people and nature" in line with Pope Francis' call to care for creation.
