How an accidental email captured what some call Pope Francis’s mixed legacy on women [Video]

As the Catholic Church mourns the death of Pope Francis and its all-male College of Cardinals prepares to elect his successor, some say an accidental email sent last month captured the contradictions at the core of Francis’s legacy on women.

In January, Francis made his highest-ranking female appointment, naming Sister Simona Brambilla prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Religious, which oversees nuns, monks and religious orders. The role had always gone to a cardinal, so Brambilla was mistakenly invited to pre-conclave meetings — exclusive to cardinals and, by definition, men.

The bureaucratic slip-up, reported by the Catholic online news site Crux, underscored what some view as a central contradiction of Francis’s papacy: While he opened a few new doors for women, he left the most important ones firmly shut.

Catholic observers, activists and feminists say they had hoped to see, at the very least, women like Brambilla included in these pre-conclave meetings.

“They could have easily invited top nuns to …