The Diocese of Saint Gallen, Switzerland’s, “Ich bin Dabei” (“I’m In”) campaign meant to encourage lay participation in the Church includes a poster calling for the “first female pope.”
The diocese’s ongoing campaign, which officially launched in May, includes several posters displayed in about 25 villages and towns as well as on its website, with laypeople’s faces promoting the discussion of several issues, such as helping the poor, clerical abuse, and “diversity.”
The most egregious poster features a laywoman’s face, saying, “Working together to pave the way for the election of the first female pope? I’m In.”
The webpage for this poster claims that women must be treated as equal to men “in all circumstances.”
“As believers, we work together to further develop the Church. For the Catholic Church in the Diocese of St. Gallen, ‘together’ truly means ‘together,’” the page says. “That is why it actively promotes equality between men and women. For the Catholic Church in the Diocese of St. Gallen, it is clear: women must be treated as equals to men—in all circumstances.”
Another section of the page entitled “A church with women” further stresses a purported need to eliminate the “gender inequality” and calls for gender to play no role in the “church community,” seemingly in a nod to female “ordination.”
“Our work is aimed at everyone who believes women should have the same rights as men and who wants to eliminate gender inequality,” the webpage states. “Through relevant projects, innovative ideas, and female leaders, we promote the status of women in the Church. Let us build a church community where gender plays no role and everyone has the same rights and responsibilities.”
The Catholic Church teaches that it is impossible for women to validly receive the sacrament of Holy Orders. In his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed this perennial teaching:
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) 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.
Furthermore, while the Church has always condemned hatred and discrimination against women, St. Thomas Aquinas and others have reiterated the Church’s teaching that women should be subject to men in certain ways and, therefore, men and women are not “equal” in all respects, though they have “perfect equality as human persons” (CCC 369).
The Diocese of St. Gallen is known to most Catholics as the meeting place of the infamous St. Gallen Mafia, a group of high-ranking, heterodox clerics who opposed Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s election to the papacy in 2005 and reportedly plotted to elect Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope. The group had multiple meetings in St. Gallen, Switzerland, between 1995 and 2006.
The diocese has also become notorious for its heterodoxy regarding the “ordination” of women. Indeed, shortly after his 2025 election to the papacy, Pope Leo XIV appointed Father Beat Grögli, a strong proponent of “female ordination,” as the twelfth bishop of St. Gallen.
Grögli previously said that the Church needs “a broad roof” and, according to a report by SRF, stated in response to a diocese’s questionnaire that “The ordained ministry [Holy Orders] can no longer just be a matter for men.”
During a press conference after his election, he reiterated, “The women’s priesthood will come,” but stressed that “we have to walk the path together,” in reference to the Universal Church.