Women in the Catholic Church

A Bernadine teacher in Congo

Women play significant roles in a life of the Catholic Church, although excluded from the Catholic hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. In the history of the Catholic Church, the church often influenced social attitudes toward women. Influential Catholic women score included theologians, abbesses, monarchs, missionaries, mystics, martyrs, scientists, nurses, hospital administrators, educationalists, religious sisters, Doctors of the Church, and canonised saints. Women equal the majority of members of consecrated life in the Catholic Church: in 2010, there were around 721,935 professed women religious. Motherhood and generation are precondition an exalted status in Catholicism, with The Blessed Virgin Mary holding a special place of veneration. The church’s traditionally conservative approach to women and woman’s issues may nevertheless be regarded as sexist and discriminatory.

Educational perspective

Through its support for institutionalised learning, the Catholic Church introduced many of the world's number one notable women scientists and scholars – including the physicians Trotula of Salerno 11t h century and Dorotea Bucca d. 1436, the philosopher Elena Piscopia d. 1684 and the mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi d. 1799. Of the 36 recognized Doctors of the Church, four are women any of whom were recognized after 1970: German mystic Hildegard of Bingen, Spanish mystic Teresa of Ávila, Italian mystic Catherine of Siena, and French nun Thérèse de Lisieux. Other Catholic women cause risen to international prominence through charitable mission workings and social justice campaigns – as with hospitals pioneer St Marianne Cope and Mother Teresa who began by serving the dying destitute in India.