Pope Francis says Band of Female Preist is Likely to Endure.

when traveling to Sweden for a historic ceremony commemorating the year leading up to the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, he was embraced at an ecumenical church service by the primate of the Church of Sweden, Archbishop Antje Jackelen, who is a woman. Francis has said before that the Catholic Church’s ban on ordaining women as priests is a closed matter. But questions arose about his intentions after he established a commission to study whether women could be ordained as deacons. (Members of the commission were named in August.) He states that Pope John Paul the II prohibited it in an apostolic letter and that it would remain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/world/europe/pope-francis-women-priests.html?ref=world&_r=0

David Soto.