Theologians conclude Mary Ward lived a heroic life
By Simon Caldwell

12 June 2009

The Vatican has taken a decisive step toward declaring a Yorkshire religious sister to be a saint nearly 400 years after she was jailed as a heretic by the same Pope who condemned Galileo.

A panel of Vatican theologians unanimously concluded that Mary Ward lived a life of "heroic virtue".

They are recommending that she should be declared Venerable - the first major step to recognition as a saint. Two miracles will be needed to declare her first blessed and then finally to canonise her.

Ward, who was born in Ripon in 1585, founded a religious order for women modelled on the Jesuits.

But when in 1631 she crossed the Alps on foot to ask Pope Urban VIII for approval he instead issued a papal bull ordering her movement to be suppressed and threw her into jail for heresy.

The Pope was furious that her order, the Institute of Mary (CORR), dared to disobey the rule, enforced by the Council of Trent, that confined nuns to the cloister.

Ward had ruled that her religious sisters should not wear habits and trained them to work with the poor and the persecuted and to found and teach in Catholic schools. She also encouraged women to perform in plays, a move considered scandalous in Shakespearean times when all female roles were played by boys.

In England it led to the nuns being derided as "chattering hussies" and caused shock in Europe where actresses were viewed with the same contempt as showgirls or prostitutes. The idea was singled out for vehement criticism by Urban VIII.

Supporters of Ward argue that she is comparable to Galileo - who was arrested a year after Ward was jailed - not only in the way she was treated but because her ideas were just as revolutionary.

Sister Gemma Simmonds, a member of the Congregation of Jesus, the name by which Ward's order is known today, said: "The Church has apologised for its treatment of Galileo and there is a statue of him in Rome. We are still waiting.

"Mary Ward had a vision of what women could do in the Church and in society not only decades but centuries before anyone else saw it," said Sister Simmonds, a lecturer in theology at Heythrop College, the University of London.

"She was given this insight directly by God. She had a vision of the equality of men and women before God and a vision of the capacity of women to do good and to work for the kingdom of God. She had this at a time when universities were still discussing whether women had souls.

"She was ferociously persecuted by the Church but she never allowed a word of bitterness or resentment against those who persecuted her to appear in her writings. Even in prison, even when they thought she was dying, she never lost that extraordinary gift of hope and trust in God.

"She is a remarkable example of English and Yorkshire tenacity, cheerfulness and courage. There is something amazingly gallant and blithe about her.

"I want her to be canonised. I want justice for her and I want the justification for what women can do in the Church."

Ward spent a year in prison in Munich, the city where she was condemned by the Inquisition, and following her release ordered that the Pope's wishes to close down her order be carried out.

She died in 1645 in the siege of York during the English Civil War and was buried in the parish church of Osbaldwick, Yorkshire. In the following century English nuns persuaded the popes to lift the suppression but they would only do so on the condition that Ward was not recognised as the foundress of the order.

Then, in the 1900s, a French member of the order, Sister Magda-len Gremion, asked Pope Pius X to restore Ward as foundress. Her Cause for sainthood was opened in 1932 and Pius XII later praised her as an "incomparable woman".

Fr Peter Gumpel, the Rome-based Jesuit in charge of the Cause, said he expects Pope Benedict XVI to declare Ward Venerable some time next year. The Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints will first review the decision of the theologians and scrutinise a 5,500-page position paper on Ward's life. "I expect the decision to be unanimous in favour of the cause progressing," said Fr Gumpel.