VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The study groups which emerged from the Synod on Synodality are now set to issue their findings at the end of the year, rather than at the end of June.

Following a meeting with Pope Leo XIV last Thursday, officials at the General Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops have delayed a key development from the multi-year Synod on Synodality.

As instructed by Pope Francis, 10 study groups were established in spring 2024 to examine key themes from the synod, an aspect which became prominent during the 2024 session of the Synod.

Among the most controversial of the 10 groups is Study Group 5, led by Cardinal Fernández and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is examining “theological and canonistic questions around specific ministerial forms.” This group includes the study of the female diaconate – as requested at the October 2023 synod session.

Fernández informed the Synod last October that the group was also availing of the Vatican’s 2016 and 2020 commissions on “female deacons,” along with using Evangelii Gaudium 103-104, Querida Amazonia 99-103, and Antiquum Ministerium 3.

All ten groups had been due to issue their reports by the end of June, but due to the death of Pope Francis and the ensuing conclave they have had a six-month extension.

Now, as approved by Leo XIV, the groups will submit their reports by December 31.

However, they were asked to file an “interim” report to the Synod’s governing secretariat by the end of June, in order to keep track of the developments in the working groups. Such reports will be published online as they are received.

A number of Synod member were particularly vocal for advancing the cause of female deacons, including Cardinals Blase Cupich and Robert McElroy.

Notwithstanding these arguments, the Catholic Church has clearly pronounced the impossibility of “female deacons.” The Catholic Church teaches that the sacrament of Holy Orders is reserved to men only and is in three degrees: bishop, priest, and deacon.

One recent and notable pronouncement is found in Pope John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, where he wrote, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

In 2002, the Vatican’s International Theological Commission wrote that the much misrepresented so-called “female deacons” of the early Church – cited by activists today – were not in fact deacons as understood today, and were certainly not ordained to any ministry.

Despite this firm prohibition from the Church on the question of female deacons, it has not stopped ardent activists from raising the topic repeatedly in recent years, and the report from Study Group 5 will be hotly anticipated, given that it will likely determine the future of the debate in the upcoming years.