Ruth Gledhill & Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland, has warned that people are leaving the Catholic Church “in droves”, tired of “little old men” who continue to “beat the drum of obedience”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour today, former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, whose book Here’s the Story: A Memoir is published today, said: “I am a person of faith but I am also a person with a thinking brain.”

Describing the hierarchy of the Church as a small, self-serving hermetically-sealed group of men, she reminded listeners that she was actually banned from speaking at a conference on women at the Vatican, an exclusion that occurred during the papacy of Pope Francis. Both his predecessors had welcomed her to the Vatican.

McAleese, a licensed canon lawyer as well as a civil lawyer, who has spoken out frequently against misogyny in the Church, admitted that nothing she had ever said had changed anything.

“I am ignored completely by the Church’s hierarchy. Utterly, absolutely ignored. But that’s ok because they’re only a tiny proportion of the Church. They’re desperately powerful, yes, and they make the rules, yes, but the Church is 1.2 billion people which is why I stay.”

She said the Church is the biggest NGO in the world, hugely influential and a permanent representative at the UN. “No other faith system has that power and influence in the world.”

She said she remained in the Church in the hope that one day, her “tiny little voice” will permeate upwards, along with that of many others who are speaking out.

“The truth of the matter is, people are walking away in droves. They are tired of these old men, trying to beat the drum of obedience, being obedient to teaching that is long past its sell-by date and needs to be revised, needs to be critiqued.

“We belong to a Church that is wonderful at talking out to the world from its moral pulpit. Wonderful for example on climate change…Pope Francis on migrants. Excellent. On outreach to the poor. Excellent.

“On women, atrocious. Women in the Church, atrocious. On protections for children who are abused, very weak and lacking in credibility still.”

She spoke as debate intensifies around the world over the title of the Pope’s new encyclical, Fratelli tutti, which means “brothers all” and as the head of the German bishops’ conference made a dramatic plea for the fundamental reassessment of the role of women in the Church.

“I think [discussion of] a women’s diaconate is legitimate,” Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, told Deutschlandfunk.

Referring to the episcopal and lay members of the current synodal procedure in the German Church, he said: “If the majority vote in favour of ordaining women deacons, they could ask the Vatican to look into and introduce the diaconate for women. But only a Council could arrive at a final decision.”

A number of popes had wanted to declare the question of women’s ordination closed, Bätzing recalled, “but the question is still being asked. It is quite simply still here and we must go into it.”

In his new autobiography, the emeritus Archbishop of Salzburg Alois Kothgasser, says deeper discussion of women’s role in the Church is “long overdue”. It was imperative to study how Jesus behaved with women and to observe the natural togetherness of men and women in the Early Church, he said.