This week in St. Peter's Square, as men in long robes shuffled in solemn processions, with chorales and canticles blending with church bells, small groups of Catholic protesters gathered half-a-kilometre away, at the far end of the wide avenue leading up to the Vatican square.
At the end of Via della Conciliazione, or Road of the Conciliation, ceremonies marked the start of the "synod on synodality" — essentially church-speak for a global summit on the future of the Catholic Church, with an emphasis on listening.
Cardinals, bishops, some clergy and ordinary Catholics from around the world are spending the better part of this month seated across from one another to talk about some of the most pressing issues facing Catholicism and the world — including climate change, LGBTQ inclusion and female leadership.
At the opposite end of the avenue, in the shadow of the massive Castel Sant'Angelo, a fortress where a pope once sought refuge during the sack of Rome, an alternative meeting unfolds.
In small, almost-daily gatherings, people hold up black-and-white portraits of sex abuse survivors and unfurl purple banners that read "Ordain Women." On Friday afternoon, others held signs that read "Resistance to patriarchy is obedience to God" and "Pope Francis, how long must women wait for equality?"
Those gathered are not part of the Vatican synod, which began Wednesday and runs for three weeks. Instead, they are part of a network of concerned Catholics who have been showing up for years at Vatican summits, doggedly reminding its hierarchy who it has shut out.
"This is a turning point, almost a new reformation — the movement for full equality for women in the Catholic Church," said Susan Roll, from Ottawa, here with eight other Canadian women from the Catholic Network for Women's Equality (CNWE), a group that formed in 1981 to advocate for the ordination of women.
"Reform takes time, but the acceleration is increasing. We're seeing more progress, more support … and it's powerful."
"When we go to mass, we never see a woman presiding over it, never a woman preaching, never a woman going in with the College of Cardinals to pick the next pope," said Mary Ellen Chown, a longtime member of CNWE, from Oakville, Ont.
"I think it is in crisis," Chown said of the Catholic Church. "And if it wants to be relevant to the generation of my children … that will involve structural change."
On Friday, the groups marched on the Vatican to push for opening all ordained ministries to all genders and for a less hierarchical model of the Catholic ministry.
Sensitive issues on the table
Church leaders have hailed this synod as a massive listening and prayer session, one that comes after a two-year consultation process with parishioners the world over — about one per cent of Catholics in all taking part and identifying what issues matter to them most.
Those issues were used to set the agenda for this month's meeting, with topics ranging from women in governance, to the rights of LGBTQ Catholics, to priestly celibacy. A total of 365 people hold voting rights, including 54 women for the first time ever — a move that comes after years of campaigning.
"Despite the many filters that were put in place with the final questions put in the hands of ordained men, the issue of women's participation and ordination rang out," said Kate McElwee, executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference, another group taking part in Friday's march.
She and others point to other positive changes leading up to the synod, such as Pope Francis being open to the idea of female deacons and the Vatican including female ordination resources on its website.
That opening up of synod is a change ushered in by Pope Francis.
For the first time, those taking part can have face-to-face conversations sitting at roundtables, including with Francis, as he has done since the start of his papacy, encouraging frank conversation.
By contrast, under Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Vatican summits were often staid encounters, held in auditoriums where bishops were expected to parrot set doctrine championed by the pope.
Still, many on the outside of this synod remain skeptical of change, saying the Catholic Church, with its record of tolerating and covering up the sex abuse by priests of children, has minimal credibility in truly listening to what's happening in their parishes and around the world.
Among them is residential school survivor Evelyn Korkmaz, from Fort Albany First Nation in northern Ontario. She's in Rome to push for Francis to mandate the immediate removal of priests suspected of abuse, the firing of bishops guilty of coverups and mandatory reporting of abuse cases to civilian authorities.
"This is the time when you have all [these] bishops from around the world here in Rome, this is the time to discuss it," she said. "What more could be more important than child sexual abuse?"
Signals of openness
Still, church observers point out that the synod, while not perfect, is the most forward-thinking gathering the Catholic Church has held since the Second Vatican Council the early 1960s, and that Pope Francis is mostly sympathetic to the causes of the protesters and outside observers.
This week, for instance, he made public his response to a letter sent by arch-conservative cardinals in July where they pushed him to clarify his position on a church ban on blessing same-sex unions, which some priests carry out.
The pope wrote he wasn't opposed to same-sex blessings, as long as priests made clear it was not the blessing of a "sacramental marriage" between a man and a woman — the only kind of marriage the Catholic Church officially recognizes.
Even the bishops and cardinals who welcome LGBTQ inclusion and don't oppose female ordination, in theory, say, anonymously at least, that they fear too great a change too fast could risk alienating conservative members of their church.
They worry that could lead to what is a worst fear for many: A schism or the formal separation of the Church into two or more.
And they say that outside a synod in which debate and listening are encouraged is neither the time nor the place for protest.
'When is the right time?'
It's a view that rankles Virginia Saldanha, a theologian from Mumbai and former executive secretary of the Office of Laity & Family of the Asian Catholic Bishops' Forum. She's here with a survivor and advocacy group called Ending Clergy Abuse.
"When is the right time?" said Saldanha. "I don't think Jesus would set foot into the Vatican of today. He would be here listening to these people's stories."
Saldanha has been coming to Rome for a decade now to draw attention to the exclusion of women from the Catholic Church, as well as what she says is the widespread abuse of nuns by priests in her home country.
Despite being a theologian and having worked with bishops, she said she has been shunned by many taking part in the synod. "They're scared of my voice."
But Mary Ellen Chown says she sees the changes in the synod as "an opening."
Iacopo Scaramuzzi, the Vatican observer with the Italian La Repubblica newspaper and author of a book on the sex abuse scandal in Italy, The Sex of Angels, agrees.
He says it was no coincidence that Pope Francis released a new encyclical, the highest level of papal document, on the environment on the day the synod opened, and made public his opinion that priests can bless same-sex unions the day before.