Rome: Former president of Ireland Mary McAleese on March 8 told a conference in Rome that it is time to bring down the walls of misogyny in the Catholic Church.

She said that it has become a “primary global carrier of the toxic virus of misogyny,” and “a male bastion of patronizing platitudes to which Pope Francis has added his own quota.”

She told the ‘Voices of Faith’ conference that the solution is readily available. “It is equality,” she declared.

McAleese challenged Pope Francis, “a reforming pope,” to commit to “real, practical action on behalf of women.”

“Start the process,” she said, “Get it going. Put the fuel in the engine! Hit the button!”

“The time for change is now.”

She described as “ludicrous” antiquated church systems, which render women “invisible and voiceless” where they are “expected to do all the hard work that keeps the church going”.

The annual ‘Voices of Faith’ conference is traditionally held in the Vatican itself.

However, it moved to another location in Rome outside the Vatican walls this year after a conservative US cardinal requested that three gay rights campaigners, including McAleese, be excluded from the program.

Irish-born US cardinal Kevin Farrell, a senior Vatican official, said it was “not appropriate” for the three to be taking part in the conference.

McAleese, who has been a campaigner for same-sex rights for 40 years, said a church hierarchy that is “homophobic and anti-abortion is not the church of the future.”

She wrote to Pope Francis in February after the Vatican declined to approve her and the two other speakers to take part in the conference.

McAleese said that she hoped her remarks were heard over “a nearby wall.”

She said those attending the conference are there to shout and to bring down “our church’s wall of misogyny.”

She said the church has “almost no culture of self-critiquing. It has a hostility to internal criticism [which] fosters a blinkered servility which borders on institutional idolatry.”

“It has kept Christ out and kept bigotry in,” she said.

McAleese said it is time to hold the church to account for “this egregious abuse of institutional power.

“The tidal wave is quickly approaching the Vatican walls,” she warned.

(Source: rte.ie)