No matter what happens next, the church should follow Pope Francis in trusting women

My favorite line from the movie Conclave has been my mantra since Pope Francis died: “The church is what happens next.”

While hopefully there will be less drama, what happens next for the church hinges on what unfolds behind those locked doors of the Sistine Chapel this week. To navigate a way forward, I encourage the 133 cardinal electors of this conclave to continue Pope Francis’ progress in including women as leaders, ministers, and decision-makers in the church.

Consider Pope Francis’ encounter with Sister Mary Scullion, cofounder of Project HOME, back in 2015. Before his papal Mass on the Parkway, Francis made a pit stop to meet Sister Mary at a “pop-up” Knotted Grotto at the Cathedral Basilica. They met under thousands of strips of billowing white cloth, each emblazoned with a handwritten knot seeking to be undone.

Although their time together was brief, Pope Francis came to see Sister Mary. He demonstrated a willingness to trust women to point him toward wounds needing healing and ministries of reconciliation unfamiliar to ordained men. He confirmed what many Philadelphians already knew: Women like Sister Mary lead the church in that nonnegotiable first step toward whatever is to happen next — healing.

I also found Pope Francis’ multiple encounters with Julia Oşeka, a senior at my alma mater, St. Joseph’s University, astonishing. I first met Oşeka in 2022 shortly after Francis convened the three-year “Synod on Synodality.” Colleagues and I from all the Catholic college campuses in the archdiocese created a pathway for her and more than 500 of her peers to participate in a global listening and discernment process.

That synod may prove to be Francis’ most impactful legacy, because he appointed 54 “Synod Mothers” to become the first women to participate in a General Assembly of Bishops — with voting status — in church history. Oşeka was the youngest among them.

My hope in what’s next for the church was renewed not only by media coverage of Oşeka dialoguing at round tables with cardinals and bishops, having equal time to share her experience as a Catholic young adult, but also by the paragraph about women in the synod‘s final document, which she ratified along with Pope Francis.

It contains recommendations I couldn’t have imagined 12 years ago: naming Mary Magdalene as Apostle to the Apostles, insisting on inclusive language, removing obstacles to women in leadership roles, and including women on seminary faculties. With Oşeka’s help, Pope Francis incorporated into his magisterial teaching a “nothing about us without us” approach to discerning what happens next in the church.

Then there’s Sister Laura Vicuña Pereira Manso, whom I met while making a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 2022. As a missionary and with Indigenous peoples of Brazil, Sister Laura was able to share with Pope Francis in more than one private audience the urgency of including women as deacons to ensure there actually can be a “what’s next” for people in ecclesial ecosystems without priests and the natural ecosystems without moral defenders.

Pope Francis appointed Sister Laura as one of two women serving as vice presidents of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon. In other words, he recognized her authority to serve in a governing role in the church while also reforming the Vatican Curia, where women now make up one in four employees and lead five departments.

To be sure, Pope Francis often embraced an “it is what it is” approach to women in the church. Many are disappointed he didn’t restore women to the diaconate during the global synod. Others are hurt by his refusal to consider women’s ordination to the priesthood. Theologians rightly note his limited theology about women.

Still, he modeled a forward-looking pastoral style familiar to Catholic female leaders and ministers worldwide. The best evidence of holding space for what happens next? Pope Francis changed his mind about women in the diaconate.

A year ago, he gave an emphatic no in a 60 Minutes interview, but last October, following women’s lead and the Holy Spirit, he gave magisterial approval for the question to remain open and for discernment to continue.

I have seen this “the church is what happens next” posture in our own archbishop, who has invited the people of God in the archdiocese to join him in seeking a “pastoral conversion of heart” to discern where and how we are called to be church in the nation’s poorest big city.

I am compelled by his willingness to draw close to the people of his flock, particularly young people, and listen to them. I’m inspired by his own trust that the Holy Spirit will guide the church in uncertain times.

My humble advice to our next pope and our archbishop: If we truly want the church to be what happens next for our world, our nation, and our city, then keep trusting fiercely faithful women to lead, minister, and govern in the church.

Maureen H. O’Connell is a professor of Christian ethics at La Salle University and director of Synod and Higher Education Engagement with Discerning Deacons.