Pontifical Council launches plenary on Women with Rome gala

(Vatican Radio)  Nuns, a plastic surgeon, an actress, a mother and daughter, women in the workforce and in the killing fields of Syria.  These are just some of the women who took part in an event organized in Rome by the Pontifical Council for Culture to kick off its plenary assembly February 4-7.  

Tracey McClure was there and filed this report:

The focus of this year’s plenary is “Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference.” Council members will be discussing among other themes, the social and cultural pressures facing women today, the rising numbers of women leaving the Church and violence against women.

Wednesday afternoon’s gala event in Rome’s Teatro Argentina included video clips sent by women from around the world.  They were responding to the Pontifical Council for Culture’s President Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi’s call for input ahead of the plenary to jumpstart a conversation about the “Life of Women”.

At the theater event, participants heard reflections from women saints – like Edith Stein – and about the difference women can make in the workforce, from a manager in the Italian metal-works industry to a female director of orchestra, to an economist who said working women bring prosperity to nations.

One video documented the courage of Kurdish women combatants as they defended the Syrian border village of Kobani from ISIS militants. In another video, an Italian mother spoke of how her vision of motherhood changed when she herself became a mother, and later, a grandmother.

Sr. Eugenia Bonetti, an Italian nun renowned for her work getting trafficked women off the streets, explained how there would be no sex slaves if there were no demand for the trade.  Italy alone, she said, accounts for 10 million clients a month.

And finally, a woman plastic surgeon spoke of the devastating effects of breast cancer on women and how reconstructive surgery, in response to an attack by disease, can help them regain their sense of femininity and self-esteem.  At the same time it was said, society is often invited to aspire to superficial models of feminine beauty imposed by the media which can distort the vision of the female body.