I guess we wouldn't want to rush these things.....

On the plus side, here's a report that Pope Benedict XVI is set to canonize and name as a Doctor of the Church the 12th century philosopher, master gardener, musician, and mystic, Hildegard of Bingen,  next October.  Pope Benedict spoke about her in a couple of audiences this past September, available here and here.  (Do you suppose that might lead to a rise in the popularity of Hildegard as a girl's name? I'd like to think so.)

On the minus side, John Allen's current column on Marco Politi's new book about Pope Benedict provides the following progress report on Pope Benedict's appointment of women to Vatican offices: 

Politi notes that in a meeting with the clergy of Rome in 2006, Benedict said, "It is right to ask whether in ministerial service ... it might be possible to make more room, to give more offices of responsibility to women."

Yet five years after those remarks, Politi observes, the situation in the Vatican -- which is, after all, the ministerial environment over which a pope has the most direct control -- is largely unchanged. Here's what he reports:

• There are only two women at the level of "superiors," meaning decision-making roles: Salesian Sr. Enrica Rosanna, under-secretary of the Congregation for Religious, and Flaminia Giovanelli, under-secretary of the Council for Justice and Peace, a lay member of Focolare.
• In the first section of the Secretariat of State, which handles internal church business, no woman holds the role of a "head of office," and there's just one sister working at the lower administrative level. In the second section, responsible for foreign relations, it's the same -- just one woman at the basic administrative level.
• In the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, there's no female theologian among the consulters, and there's no woman on the commission responsible for matrimonial cases. On the International Theological Commission, which advises the congregation on doctrinal issues, there are two women among the 29 members.