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The New Yorker: Fact In 1979, when the Pope met the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, in Washington, the assembly's leader, Sister Theresa Kane, the president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Union, asked the Pontiff that "half of humankind" be included "in all ministries of our Church." She was rebuffed with an observation that the Vatican has frequently invoked to explain its position on the issue of admitting women to the priesthood: women, the Pope said, were to remain humble, like Mary�and Mary was not a priest. Sister Theresa might have pointed out that Jesus was not a priest, either�nor, for that matter, were any of the Apostles�but, in accordance with the spirit that has prevailed