VATICAN CITY (RNS) — The Sunday after her confirmation, when young people raised Catholic are supposed to embrace their faith for themselves, Ellie Hidalgo’s niece begged her parents to not make her go to church. “She said, ‘I just don’t think this church is set up for somebody like me,’” Hidalgo recalled in a recent interview. “‘I don’t think God would speak to me only through the voice of a priest.’”
The young woman’s elders, said Hidalgo, were shocked to realize that despite their own deep Catholic faith, the religion had failed to pass to the new generation, and particularly that, like many young Catholic women, Hildalgo’s niece felt the church had inhibited her from truly experiencing her faith.
Her niece’s experience is the kind of story that drove Hidalgo to co-found Discerning Deacons, an organization that argues for the ordination of women deacons. The group launched in 2021, spurred in part by the 2019 Synod for the Pan Amazon Region, a meeting in Rome that highlighted the dire need in South America’s remotest regions for more contact with clergy. Deacons can preach at Mass, baptize children and marry couples, though they cannot say Mass, hear confession or anoint the sick.
But Hidalgo’s 12 years spent helping with pastoral duties at a Jesuit chu …