This may seem like the Onion or Eye of the Tiber. It is not.

In a story about Pope Francis’ remarks about the expanded role women should play in the Church, the Associated Press dropped in this little nugget. This is a news report, mind you.

But the pope gave no sign that the Vatican glass ceiling against ordaining women for the priesthood might see some cracks during his papacy.

…

As the Vatican toils to shore up sometimes flagging faith among Catholics, Francis laid out how the church sees women as crucial for that.

“The presence of women in a domestic setting turns out to be so necessary” for the “transmission to future generations of solid moral principles and the very transmission of the faith,” Francis said.

Shutting women out of the priesthood has also meant they have never climbed to the top ranks of the most crucial offices at the Vatican, since those jobs go to prelates. The pope’s top advisers are drawn from cardinals, the elite group of men whose responsibilities include electing popes.

The Vatican has cracked down swiftly and severely on any women who defy the ban by being ordained priests, trying to discourage female ordination movements that have some support in the U.S. and western Europe.

This isn’t reporting, it is editorializing.  Stupid editorializing that shows that the author does not understand his subject matter in the least.

*subhead*Glass ceiling?.*subhead*