Empowerment of Women in Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council

The paper is concerned with the question of the impact of Vatican II on the position and role of women in Catholic Church. Pope John XXIII quite surprisingly stated in his encyclical Pacem in Terris (1963) that women's participation in public life was one of the signs of the times. And it was in this spirit of reading the signs of the times that the Second Vatican Council took place, which could be understood as the catalyst that actually enabled and stimulated the woman question and an accelerated development of European feminist theology. Thus, the paper centres on the presence and recognition of women's active participation and cooperation in the life of the Church before, during and after Vatican II. The second part of the paper brings a critical review of the changes and shifts regarding the position and role of women in Slovenian Catholic Church after Vatican II and considers the phenomenon of the so-called women's spirituality. In the conclusion, present and future open issues and challenges are exposed.