Sister named to Vatican post by Pope Leo XIV says women can feel priestly call

Sister Mary Teresa Barron, NSA, superior general of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles, said again in an interview with EWTN News on October 20, 2026, that women can experience an interior call to the priesthood. Pope Leo XIV has named her adjunct secretary of the Dicastery for Evangelization.

"Who am I to say whether the door is open or closed to women priests?" Barron said. "Women today can feel a vocation to the priesthood. Some of the great saints felt it too. So for me the question is: how can we, within the Church, facilitate that discernment?"

Discernment in the Church

Barron asked whether the Holy Spirit is calling women at this point in history. "What do we do as a Church to accompany that discernment and to see whether, yes, this is what the Spirit is calling the whole Church to at this moment or not?" she said. She added that "in discernment, there is always a choice at the end. It is yes or no."

She acknowledged that the question has been declared closed on several occasions, but said it "comes back and comes back," and that "the Spirit will guide us even if we say that we cannot talk about it now."

Ordinatio Sacerdotalis

The apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, signed by Pope John Paul II in 1994, settled the question definitively: "The Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."

John Paul II invoked his ministry of confirming the brethren to remove "all doubt regarding a matter of great importance" which, in his words, pertains "to the Church's divine constitution itself."

At the 2024 synod

Barron had already made the same points at the assembly of the Synod on Synodality in Vatican City in 2024. She said then that the question of women's ordination should not be examined in theological or canonical terms but from the perspective of the Spirit. "Is the Spirit calling women? Because some women do feel a call to the priesthood or to the diaconate," she said at the time.

She also said that one of the aims of the synod was "to share the possibilities that are open to women for governance and leadership within the Church," and she lamented that Catholics are "largely" unaware of those possibilities.

Timing of the interview

News of the interview circulated on October 22, the feast of St. John Paul II, the pope who formally closed the debate with Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. Barron takes up her new post on January 4, 2027, and in that role will also serve as president of the Pontifical Mission Societies.