La collaborazione femminile al sacerdozio nelle istituzioni ecclesiali di primo Novecento: il caso delle Figlie del Cuore di Gesù davanti al Sant’Uffizio

Between the XIXth and the XXth century the Catholic Church set in motion an intense involvement of women in the fight against the supposed apostasy of Modernity. Many Catholic authors focused on the female collaboration with the clergy for the “Christian restoration of society”. The resulting initiatives and theories found a deep correspondence in female aspirations and desires for a new role in the religious world. However this essay shows that these innovations faced a great opposition and an early concern for the female desire for priesthood within the Catholic institutions. We shall develop, in particular, the example of the Daughters of St. Francis of Sales (founded by Caroline Carré de Malberg in 1872) and of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart (founded in the same year by Marie Martiny-Deluil) with their devotion to the « Virgo sacerdos », which implies that they consider the Virgin Mary as a priest. The commissioners of the Holy Office, who in 1912 started examining the casus, believed that this devotion could accredit women as true priests’ collaborators and even lead to a form of Marian way to female priesthood.