A papal commission tasked with studying whether women may be ordained as deaconesses has issued a concluding statement that does not permanently resolve the question, instead passing responsibility for any further discernment to Pope Leo XIV.

The Second Commission for the Study of the Female Diaconate was created in 2020 by Pope Francis in response to the 2019 Amazon Synod, where participants asked for women to be admitted to the permanent diaconate. 

The commission publicly released its findings this week at the request of Pope Leo XIV, who received their seven-page report Sept. 18 from Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi, the commission chair. 

The 10 members of the commission were split 5-5 on the question of whether women could receive the sacrament of Holy Orders as deaconesses. However, they approved in a 7-1 vote a 2022 statement that rules out moving toward female diaconal ordinations at present.

The original text of the September report is in Italian, and the following partial translation was provided by Vatican News: “The status quaestionis of historical research and theological investigation, as well as their mutual implications, rules out the possibility of moving in the direction of admitting women to the diaconate understood as a degree of the sacrament of Holy Orders. In light of Sacred Scripture, Tradition, and the Church’s Magisterium, this assessment is strongly maintained, although it does not at present allow for a definitive judgment to be formulated, as is the case with priestly ordination.”

Unlike the Church’s 1994 declaration Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which taught definitively that priestly ordination is reserved to men, the commission pointedly did not issue a similar final judgment regarding the diaconate.

The document states that “at present” a definitive decision cannot be made. While the answer today is no, the possibility is not formally foreclosed for all time the same way the female priesthood is.

This calibrated phrasing in the statement reflects the commission’s internal deadlock. According to the Vatican News report, the group was split evenly over the foundations of the issue. 

Five members supported the traditional argument that male-only Holy Orders are intrinsic to the “masculinity of Christ” and to the Church’s nuptial symbolism of Christ the Bridegroom and Church the Bride. Altering this, they argued, would rupture the sacramental order.

Five members countered that baptismal equality (Gal. 3:28), historical evidence for deaconesses in the early Church, and the Church’s own development of doctrine on human dignity all support reconsideration.

A key paragraph asserting the necessity of male sacramental identity received exactly five votes for retention and five for removal. 

In the commission’s final session in February 2025, it reviewed submitted comments solicited during the global Synod process. According to Vatican News, although “many interventions” were received, only 22 individuals or groups submitted written materials, and from only a handful of countries. The commission judged the sample too narrow to represent the “voice of the Synod” or the wider People of God. 

The report thus effectively hands the matter back to Pope Leo, who must now decide whether to maintain the status quo, initiate further study, or simply allow the question to remain open but dormant.

For now, the Church’s teaching remains unchanged. There will be no ordinations of women as deaconesses, but there is also still no definitive closure that would bind future generations.