Pope Leo appoints Irish bishop who said women should lead ‘liturgical celebrations’
Bishop Michael Router defended female Episcopal 'bishop' Mariann Edgar Budde after she lectured U.S. President Donald Trump with a pro-LGBT sermon in 2025.
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Fri Jul 17, 2026 - 12:51 pm EDT
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(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV on Thursday named Bishop Michael Router, who has a history of advocating for women to take on leadership roles in the Church, as the next bishop of Derry, Ireland.
Bishop Router, 61, in a 2024 homily following the Synod on Synodality, praised the Synod’s final report, which showed an openness to allowing women to be “ordained” deacons. He also expressed hope that the Church would allow women to take on more leadership roles in parishes, such as with faith formation and even in “liturgical celebrations.”
Just months later, the then-auxiliary bishop in the Diocese of Armagh came to thedefense of female Episcopal “bishop” Mariann Edgar Budde after she lectured U.S. President Donald Trump with a pro-LGBT sermon the day after his inauguration.
READ: Irish Catholic bishop praises female Episcopal ‘bishop’ who lectured Trump with pro-LGBT sermon
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“I am filled with hope that women, who are so vital to the mission, will be given a greater say in the decisions that are taken about all issues within the Church and that the formal Ministry of Catechist will give many women an opportunity to take a leadership role in parishes, in faith formation and in liturgical celebrations,” the bishop said in his homily on the Synod in 2024.
While the statement is vague, Router may have been subtly calling for women’s “ordination,” as priests lead Catholic liturgies.
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.
Later in his homily, Router stressed that the final Synod report also aims to create a more “inclusive Church” that takes the voices of the “marginalized” into account.
“I also believe that the call contained in the final report to create a more inclusive Church where the young, the marginalized, and those of different faiths, are valued and listened to as sons and daughters of God, will broaden our scope for outreach and help us to discern a way forward together in faith,” the bishop said.
Router also echoed the report’s call for guidelines to incorporate synodality and “ecumenical awareness” as part of clerical formation, emphasizing his belief that this would be critical in preparing the Church “for roles that promote unity and inclusive decision-making.”
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READ: Irish bishop says young Catholics yearn for ‘clarity’ and tradition, not synodality
Then in January 2025, Router defended and praised the female Episcopal “bishop” Mariann Edgar Budde after she hijacked the National Prayer Service the day after Trump’s inauguration, pushing his administration to show “mercy” on illegal immigrants and self-professed “LGBT” people.
“It is amazing the negativity that a simple, sincere statement of Christian beliefs can engender,” he said.
The bishop also called her sermon, which contradicted key Catholic teaching, “forthright and courageous,” and even compared her to St. Brigid.
Router has also made several ambiguous statements on welcoming migrants to the Emerald Isle, without making any kind of distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. In a 2020 statement ahead of Ireland’s general election, also signed by Archbishop Eamon Martin, the archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, the bishops underscored the faithful’s purported duty to consider migrants and those seeking asylum when casting their votes.
“Ireland, as the country of ‘one thousand welcomes,’ must also consider with compassion its responsibility for welcoming the stranger and meeting the accommodation needs of those migrants and asylum seekers who come here,” they wrote.
Router will officially be installed as the next Bishop of Derry in September, replacing Bishop Donal McKeown.
“It is an immense honor to have been nominated by His Holiness Pope Leo XIV to serve as Bishop of Derry. I thank the Holy Father sincerely for the trust he has placed in me, a trust that I receive with a deep awareness of my own limitations,” the bishop said during a press conference following his appointment.
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- Bishop Michael Router
- Catholic
- Catholic Church
- Gender
- Ireland
- Leo XIV
- Liturgy
- Mariann Budde
- Michael Router
- Pope Leo
- Pope Leo XIV
- Vatican
- Women Deacons
- Women Priests
- Women's Ordination
