The Byseee School and Community Project
Since 2020, Catholic Women Speak has been supporting the Byseee School and community project in Freetown, Sierra Leone, run by CWS members Yema Jusufu and Edita Fofana. We send money every month, which helps to provide the children with one school lunch a week, as well as contributing towards salaries, maintenance, supplies, and running costs. Find out more.
Women and the Synod
As the Church's leaders and representatives from around the world gather in Rome for the 2024 Synod, we are with them in hope and prayer for signs of substantial and enduring change, especially with regard to the roles and representation of women in the Church. We are thankful for the Church's outreach and ministry to the most suffering and marginalised peoples, including refugees, those exploited and impoverished by global economics, indigenous communities, and all whose lives are afflicted by violence.
At CWS we remain committed to creating spaces for women's voices in the Church and society. Since we first started in 2014, there has been a growing movement of Catholic women around the world, working together and supporting each other in the struggle for change. We work in different groups and contexts, sometimes with different priorities and perspectives, but we stand in solidarity with one another and with all who yearn for the full participation and influence of women of faith at all levels of the Church's life.
The failure of the Catholic hierarchy to engage with women in ways that would use the many skills, gifts and sacramental presences we could offer as full and equal partners and disciples is the greatest obstacle in the way of implementing Pope Francis's rich vision of a pastorally sensitive and just Church that identifies with the poorest and most oppressed peoples, and that seeks to embody care for creation in all its activities. The continuing subordination of women in the Church's institutional leadership and our exclusion from sacramental ministries undermines the authenticity and credibility of all the Church's teachings on human dignity, inclusivity and respect.
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In 2015 and in 2018, CWS members gathered in Rome on the Feast of St Thérèse of Lisieux, to launch the books we'd published on the Synod themes, and to act as a visible presence of women on the fringes of the Synods.
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We're gradually adding resources to this page for those who are following this year's Synod and want to continue its work by speaking out for women in their own communities. Please visit us here regularly to see what's new as we post information and insights. If you have relevant items of interest you'd like to share, you can contact us by using the form below and we'll post links here.
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