At a time when religious communities are experiencing an unprecedented crisis, Leo XIV used his August 12 address to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) to encourage them not to revive the practices that helped them grow for centuries but to become “experts in synodality.”
This ill-focused advice is akin to telling someone to change his shirt after he soiled his pants.
In recent years the Vatican has come down hard on female communities that want to follow a traditional rule of life and assist at the Latin Mass. The crackdown was carried out largely thanks to the publication of the Cor Orans document in 2018.
Addressing the LCWR during its 70th-anniversary gathering in Florida this week, Prevost told attendees he was “pleased to learn that the assemblyʼs proceedings will include a synodal method of listening, discussion, and discernment, with an openness and a willingness to understand what others are saying.”
Leo’s remarks come as women religious from across the United States, Canada, and Latin America are hemorrhaging vocations, an inconvenient fact he sidestepped entirely. “All Christians are called to build Christ’s communion,” he blandly told them.
Promoting women in the Vatican
In decades and centuries past, the predominantly contemplative nature and strict rules of life that attracted young women to religious life were emphasized and promoted by the Church’s hierarchy. In more recent years, sisters and nuns have come to be associated with social justice activism and feminist ideology.
The Dispatch
Within weeks of his election, Leo helped perpetuate this reality. After he told Crux that he intends to continue the policy of appointing women to positions of authority within the Vatican, he immediately got to work.
In February, he named Sister Simona Brambilla as a Member of the Dicastery for Bishops. He also appointed Sister Raffaella Petrini, who was serving as the Governorate of the Vatican City State, to the Vatican’s Commission for Reserved Matters.
Leo then named former EWTN head Maria Montserrat Alvarado to lead the Vatican communications office while tapping Sr. Alessandra Smerilli, F.M.A. to serve as the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
On August 6, Leo further approved fifteen new consultors to the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, of whom Sister Patricia Murray, C.J., and Sister Maria Nirmalini, A.C., were included.
Murray is a former executive secretary of the International Union of Superiors General and has been a prominent advocate of Francis’ understanding of synodality for women religious. During the 2023 Synod, she argued that controversial questions concerning the diaconate and women’s priesthood should remain part of the discussion. She has also spoken publicly about the experience with LGBT persons in the Church.
Nirmalini, meanwhile, is an Indian religious who serves as Superior General of the Apostolic Carmel. She participated in the 2023 Synod and has advocated for a liturgical reform characterized by “less emphasis on uniformity and more on creativity.”
Leo’s remarks to the LCWR are in keeping with what he has said before. In October 2025, while addressing consecrated men and women, he told them they were in a privileged position to become “experts in synodality.”
Sadly, it has been proven beyond all doubt that “synodality” and “walking together” do not lead sisters and brothers closer to Christ, His Church, and the Gospel, but only more deeply into the managerial labyrinth of modern ecclesial politics and bureaucratic decision making.
Instead of reviving what religious life has always been about — and which would surely increase vocations: consecration to Christ, fidelity to the Church’s doctrines and spirituality, the evangelical counsels and the charism handed down by each institute — Leo is watering down religious life to a mere committee exercise.
If “synodality” really did mean helping religious communities recover genuine Christian fraternity, praying together, and seeking the will of God, there would be little for Catholics to fear. But rest assured, the real aim is to create an environment of more meetings, more surrendering of orthodoxy, and more confusing consultations that ultimately treat the Church’s doctrinal teachings as temporarily agreed-upon beliefs that can change over time, rather than perennial truths that impose themselves upon our consciences by their very nature. All these aspects are exactly what destroyed the unique character of Catholic religious life and made it attractive in the first place.
