Altar Servers

Catholic News Service reported yesterday that the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, included a story which praised the Vatican's 1994 decision, during the pontifcate of Pope John Paul II, to allow girls to serve as altar servers. The article appeared shortly after Pope Benedict XVI met with 25,000 altar servers in St. Peter's Square, of which 60% were girls and young women.

The report from CNS said,

Assisting the priest during Mass is both a service and a privilege and represents "a deep and responsible way to live one's Christian identity," said an article published Aug. 7 in L'Osservatore Romano.

"The exclusion of girls from all of this, for the sole reason of their being female, has always weighed heavily and represented a deep inequality within Catholic education," it said.

The CNS article concludes mentioning the 2001 clarification which stated that priests could not be required by their bishop to use girls and women as altar servers.

The full text of the article is available here.