St. Teresa of Ávila becomes the Church's first woman Doctor

ROME, September 27, 1970 AD — Pope Paul VI declared Saint Teresa of Ávila, the Carmelite nun who died in 1582 AD, a Doctor of the Universal Church during Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. She is the first woman to be given the title.

A Doctor of the Church is a saint whom the Pope declares a teacher for the whole Church. The Discalced Carmelites, the order St. Teresa reformed, had asked Pope Paul VI for the title, and many cardinals, bishops and university scholars had joined the request. One question stood in the way. The Sacred Congregation of Rites, the Vatican department that examined the request, could not decide whether a woman could be a Doctor at all.

The congregation’s members met on December 20, 1967 AD. They proposed an inquiry into whether the title could go “not only to men but also to women who had contributed to the common good of the faithful for holiness and excellent doctrine.” The cardinals, prelates and officials who examined the question concluded that a woman could hold the title. Pope Paul VI approved their conclusion on March 21, 1968 AD.

St. Teresa had written the books on which the title rests four centuries earlier, while she was founding convent after convent across Spain. In the book of her Life she told her confessor that if anything in it went against the Catholic faith, “your reverence must burn it at once—for I give my consent.” The Life was reported to the Inquisition. The Inquisition kept the manuscript for twelve years, and St. Teresa never got it back. The Inquisitor General, Cardinal Gaspar de Quiroga, told her in person that nothing in it deserved censure.

St. Teresa began the Interior Castle at Toledo in 1577 AD with the words: “Rarely has obedience laid upon me so difficult a task as this of writing about prayer.” Pope Paul VI’s apostolic letter for the declaration, Multiformis Sapientia Dei (The manifold wisdom of God), called her “a woman of simple customs and ignorant of literary culture” who “had repeatedly declared her inability to understand and teach,” and who was nevertheless “able to understand, teach and write, inspired by God.”

Crowds of the faithful from every nation, above all from Spain, came to the basilica on Sunday, and many cardinals and prelates were present. During the Mass, Pope Paul VI pronounced the declaration: “With true knowledge and thoughtful decision and for the fullness of our apostolic authority we declare Saint Teresa of Jesus, Virgin of Avila, Doctor of the Universal Church.” He thanked God with the people in the basilica and then began his homily.

Pope Paul VI’s first words in the homily were: “Noi abbiamo conferito, o meglio: Noi abbiamo riconosciuto il titolo di Dottore della Chiesa a Santa Teresa di Gesù” (We have conferred, or rather, We have recognised, the title of Doctor of the Church on Saint Teresa of Jesus).

Later in the homily, Pope Paul VI noted that St. Teresa was the first woman on whom the Church had conferred the title. That, he said, called to mind the stern words of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, Mulieres in Ecclesiis taceant (Let women keep silence in the churches). Those words still meant, he said, that women were not called to hold offices of teaching and ministry in the Church’s hierarchy. He asked whether St. Paul’s command was now being broken, and said the answer was clearly no: “non si tratta di un titolo che comporti funzioni gerarchiche di magistero” (this is not a title that carries a hierarchical office of teaching).

Pope Paul VI said that keeping women out of that office did not mean the Church thought any less of the part women play in it. Many women had gone so far in professing the faith, he said, that their words and writings had guided other Christians.

Pope Paul VI gave two grounds for the title. The first was her holiness of life, proclaimed by the Church when she was canonized in 1622 AD; the second, and the greater, was the excellence of her teaching. With the title, he said, her teaching on prayer would carry more authority in the Church and in the world. Her statue stands in the basilica among the founders of religious orders, and he said its inscription, Mater Spiritualium (Mother of spiritual people), described her well. He quoted the definition of prayer she gave in her Life: “mental prayer is nothing else, in my opinion, but being on terms of friendship with God, frequently conversing in secret with Him Who, we know, loves us.”

Pope Paul VI’s apostolic letter says that St. Teresa named one thing as the foundation of her teaching, and repeated it “with full truth and joy of heart” as she died: that she was a daughter of the Church. Pope Paul VI closed his homily on the same words, calling them the summary of her life. St. Teresa’s words, in her own Spanish, were: “En fin, Señor, soy hija de la Iglesia” (After all, Lord, I am a daughter of the Church).