"It won't solve the problems in the church, but it would be a breakthrough."
Former President of Ireland Mary McAleese has urged the Catholic Church to allow women to become deacons, while also supporting calls for women to be ordained as priests.
Speaking on
RTÉ News at an event at Trinity College in Dublin on Saturday, McAleese noted:
"It won't solve the problems in the church, but it would be a breakthrough.
"It would be a breach of the bunker in some ways, because the bunker, ultimately, is a bunker of really embedded misogyny. It goes very, very, very deep.
"And it goes so deep that good men do not even see it in themselves," she added.
McAleese's comments arrive days after Pope Francis opened debates as to the role of women within the Catholic Church.
Speaking in Vatican City
last weekend, Pope Francis stated:
"In the transmission of faith, in the preservation of culture, I would just like to underline this: that we have not yet realised what women mean in the Church."
Many have taken his comments as an admission that the Catholic Church will change policy, but some experts have argued that such conversations aren't new and won't necessarily lead to any significant changes.
