Former abbot calls for women to be elevated to Cardinals

Former abbot Martin Werlen calls for women to be elevated to cardinals. He believes Pope Francis already intended this. The time is ripe, he says – and has already named a candidate.

The former abbot of the Swiss monastery of Einsiedeln, Martin Werlen, advocates for women to be cardinals in the Catholic Church. He dreams that Pope Leo XIV will elevate the prefect of the Dicastery for Religious Orders, Simona Brambilla, to the rank of cardinal at the earliest opportunity, Werlen said on Wednesday during a panel discussion at the Salzburg University Weeks.

Werlen, who headed the Einsiedeln monastery from 2001 to 2013, urged swift decisions from the Vatican. The time for a female cardinal is ripe, he said, and it cannot be delayed any further. The former abbot expressed the suspicion that this was the plan of Pope Francis, who, with Brambilla, had appointed a woman to head a dicastery for the first time. "And I trust Pope Leo to do the same," added Werlen.

Werlen: The Church must resonate with people's lives

With regard to the synodal process of the Catholic Church initiated by Francis, the Benedictine warned against leaving it at the level of discussions and forgetting concrete reforms. "That would be catastrophic," said Werlen. If the Church were to reconnect with people's lives, it would have a chance like no other institution to bring people back into its midst.

A cardinal is the highest Catholic dignitary after the pope, and the College of Cardinals is the pope's most important advisory body. Cardinals elect the pope in the conclave if they are younger than 80. The Bishop of Rome freely determines whom to appoint as a cardinal. Canon law prescribes only a few requirements; Candidates must be priests. The last non-ordained Catholic was elevated to cardinal in 1858.

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See Law, Power and Discernment.  People who have had dealings with Brambilla et al do not rate the experience highly.