Photo: AFP / ANDREAS SOLARO
With a patriarchy deeply rooted in tradition, women in the Catholic Church are split on the urgency - or even need - to ordain women as priests.
More than $30 million has been bet on who will be the next pope, in what has been called the most unpredictable conclave yet.
But one thing is certain, the winner won't be a woman.
With the conclave to begin tomorrow (7 May) when 133 cardinals start to vote on Francis' successor, all eyes will be on the Vatican chimney for the white smoke that signals a new Pontiff has been chosen.
If she were a bettor, historian in women and religion Bronagh Ann McShane says she would put money on a decision by the end of the week, but wouldn't put it on who the next pope will be.
Nor would she punt on a woman becoming the spiritual head of the 1.4 billion faithful in her lifetime.
"It's a glacial pace of change, it truly is glacial," says McShane, a researcher at Dublin's Trinity College who has written a book, Irish Women in Religious Orders 1530-1700.
She describes the role of women in the church today as paradoxical.
"On the one hand we know that women make up the majority of the church's global membership today and they are really essential to many aspects of its functioning.
"They lead schools and hospitals, they serve as theologians, educators, missionaries, they hold together parish life in communities across the globe and many religious orders of women do extraordinary pastoral and social work for the church.
"Yet when it comes to formal positions of governance and sacramental authority the church really remains profoundly hierarchical and male dominated."
In the early years of Christianity women were deacons, prophets and leaders of religious communities, and by the middle ages they were influential as mystics, abbesses and theologians.
They lived on the margins of society, which allowed for a more egalitarian relationship. But as the church became more organised and was adopted in the Roman Empire, spaces for female leadership began to retract, the start of a decline in women's formal authority.
Pope Francis appointed women to key roles. That includes Sister Raffaella Petrini, named in March as secretary general of the Governorate of Vatican City State.
It is the highest ranking role ever held by a woman in the church but it could be very short-lived, says McShane.
"With the death of Pope Francis all Vatican prefects resign their jobs, with a few exceptions, and no new curial heads are appointed until a successor is elected."
The Detail also speaks to two New Zealand women, both with deep Catholic faiths but very different experiences of the church.
Christina Reymer says Catholicism is in her DNA and she can trace it back 500 years with her Dutch ancestors. Photo: Supplied
Christina Reymer of Hamilton, a long-time agitator for change in the church, helped set up the group Be The Change because she got tired of fighting the establishment and decided to be a Catholic in her own way.
"We're not waiting any more. We're not asking for permission if we can celebrate eucharist together as women around a table. One day hopefully we'll get recognition," she says.
Other women have left the Catholic church for Anglican church which accepts women as vicars but Reymer says Catholicism is in her DNA and she can trace it back 500 years with her Dutch ancestors.
"It's who we are and I feel like I have to honour them, my forebears."
Lay leader at the Holy Family Parish in Christchurch, Vicki Surrey argues that women hold as many leadership lay roles at her church as men.
As the evangelisation and discipleship co-ordinator at Holy Family Parish in Christchurch, Surrey says she feels respected and also valued for her contributions as a mother of three girls.
She is working with her leadership team on developing a new structure where the priest collaborates with parishioners with the gifts and skills to support him.
She says equality is a difficult term and she wants to be seen as an individual. But she believes it is right for only men to be priests.
"One of our understandings we have in the Catholic church is that those in the ministerial priesthood act "in persona Christi" in the person of Christ and that is one of the reasons which is it reserved to the men."
Surrey says she doesn't feel she is missing out.
"We've seen the priesthood as a way to serve but it's only one way to serve."
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