Pope Francis' big gathering of Catholic bishops says it was "urgent" to guarantee fuller participation of women in church governance and called for research on allowing women to be deacons to be released within a year. After a month of closed-door debate, the Pope's meeting on the future of the Catholic Church ended late Saturday with the approval of a 42-page text on a host of issues that will now be considered at a second session next year. Each paragraph passed with the necessary two-thirds majority, but the ones involving women and priestly celibacy obtained the most "no" votes. Nevertheless organisers hailed the voting as a success since none of the paragraphs failed to pass. Pope Francis' month-long meeting on the future of the Catholic Church was wrapping up on Saturday with voting on a final document on the role of women and how the church can better respond to the needs of the faithful today. Organisers and participants alike have tried to temper expectations for any big changes to emerge, especially on hot-button doctrinal issues such as the church's views on homosexuality. They have insisted the mere process of forcing bishops to sit down at round tables to listen to ordinary Catholics for a month was the important novelty of the gathering. But there was no denying the Pope's big Synod on Synodality, as the meeting is called, and the two-year canvassing of rank-and-file Catholics that preceded it, has indeed generated expectations. Progressives have hoped the gathering would send a message that the church would be more welcoming of LGBTQ+ people and offer women more leadership roles in a hierarchy where they are barred from ordination. Conservatives have emphasised the need to stay true to the 2000-year tradition of the church and warned that opening debate on such issues was a "Pandora's Box" that risked schism. Another session is planned for next October, with final recommendations or conclusions from that meeting presented to the Pope for his consideration in a future document. Francis called the synod as part of his overall reform efforts to make the church a more welcoming place. In his vision of a "synodal" church, the faithful are listened to and accompanied rather than preached at by an out-of-touch "clerical" hierarchy that has suffered a credibility crisis over clergy abuse scandals around the world. Australian Associated Press