Record number of women to attend Synod

BY CINDY WOODEN POPE BENEDICT XVI has nominated more women than ever to attend next month's Synod of Bishops on the Bible.
He named six female scholars as experts and 19 women as observers, giving the October 526 Synod of Bishops on the Word of God the largest group of women ever to participate in a Catholic synod.
The Pope chose men and women from every part of the world and from a wide variety of professional spheres, nominating 32 voting members, 41 experts and 37 observers.
The 32 clerics Pope Benedict named as full members of the synod will join about 180 bishops who were elected by their national bishops' conferences, 10 priests elected by the Union of Superiors General and about two dozen cardinals and archbishops, heads of Vatican congregations and councils, who automatically are members of the synod.
The papal nominees include 18 cardinals, 12 of whom head dioceses. Among them are Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec, Cardinal George Pell of Sydney and Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-lciun of Hong Kong. The bishops that the Pope nominated come from Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. They include Bishop Jose Lai Hung-seng of Macau.
The other full synod members selected by the Pope are Bishop Javier Echevania Rodriguez, head of the personal prelature of Opus Dei; Fr Adolfo Nicolas, superior general of the Jesuits: and Fr Julian Carron, president of the Communion and Liberation movement.
The voting members of the synod can address the entire gathering and they determine the propositions to be presented to the Pope at the end of the gathering.
The 41 experts will serve as advisers for the synod members as they discuss the importance of the Scriptures in the life of the Church, look at the Bible's role in Catholic prayer and liturgy, evaluate its role in ecumenical and interreligious relations and discuss ways to improve biblical literacy at every level of the Church.
The women named as experts are Sister Sam Butler, a professor of dogmatic theology at St Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers; Spanish Sister Nuria Calduch-Benages, a professor of the biblical theology of the Old Testament at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University and Bruna Costacuna, an Italian professor of Old Testament theology at the Gregorian.
They also include Marguerite Lena, a professor of philosophy in Paris; Sister Mary Jerome Obiorah, professor of Sacred Scripture at the University of Nigeria and at the major seminary of the Archdiocese of Onitsha, Nigeria, and Trappist Sister Germana Strola, a member of the monastery at Vitorchiano, Italy.