Leocadie Lushombo

This article expands on Pope Francis’s vision of a community of fraternity. This community is one in which people support each other, identify with each other’s vulnerability, bear one another’s burdens, and embrace collective salvation. Although Francis takes steps forward in considering violence against women, a proper order to which a community of fraternity must turn requires that one draw much more from local narratives of injustice against women. This task can guide the Church’s orthopraxis on women’s suffering, which should consider how psychological or sociopolitical factors doubly wound women, especially in contexts of war and conflict. The effects of these wounds should inform the idea of imputability and responsibility for action regarding absolute moral laws. The article includes narratives affirming Francis’s call for mercy to be put first in accompanying wounded women, who become the locus theologicus on the suffering Christ.