Vatican Snubs Woman

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32209, 30 January 1970, Page 2

Vatican Snubs Woman

fN.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) VATICAN CITY, Jan. 29.

The Vatican refused to grant accreditation to a West German diplomat because she is a woman, a Vatican spokesman has announced.

Confirming reports about the rejection by the Secretariat of State Mrs Elisabeth Muller, aged 44, the spokesman, said the Vatican made it clear it would prefer to respect the tradition by which only men held high-ranking diplomatic posts to the Vatican.

The Bonn Government had proposed Mrs Muller, the head of the Bonn commercial delegation in Prague for three years, as “Counsellor Second Class” in their West German Embassy to the Vatican.

Counsellors have frequent contacts with the Secretariat of State, headed by Cardinal Jean Villot, aged 64, and

often attend receptions at which high-ranking prelates are present. Vatican sources said the Dutch Embassy had a female attache, but she held a lowerranking post than that proposed for Mrs Muller. Last week the Vatican newspaper, “L’Osservatore Romano”, said that the Roman Catholic Church would cease to exist if it gave in to demands for women to be priests. A front-page article by Father Divo Barsotti said Christ chose men, and not women, for such work.

The article was published 16 days after the Roman Catholic Pastoral Council of the Netherlands voted for the progressive integration of women into the priesthood. Another woman, a nineteenth century Spanish nun, Maria Soledad Torres Acosta, was proclaimed a saint by Pope Paul in a solemn ceremony in Saint Peter’s Basilica last week.

In a speech, he said her life could be summed up in two words, humility and charity. “We feel her holiness radiating all over the world,” he added.