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Good morning, In 2022, three million Catholic pilgrims travelled to Mexico City, in a tradition dating back 500 years. They’d come to see the Virgin of Guadalupe, a shrine of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is believed to have made an appearance there in 1531. The popular shrine is also nicknamed the ‘Queen of Mexico’. Yesterday, there was a new queen in town as Claudia Sheinbaum was announced Mexico’s first woman president. Her landslide victory was heralded as a sea change for women in what’s often seen as a country of deeply ingrained patriarchy and machismo. Where every year thousands of women are murdered, kidnapped or experience horrific violence at the hands of men. You could also say that the Virgin Mary shatters the glass ceiling of Christian patriarchy. In the Bible, God chooses to be born of a woman. But this feat doesn’t negate the reality that women all over the world can be treated as second class citizens, including in the Church. There’s been some talk this week about the nature of gender: what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman. Some Christians are drawn to Mary, because they have prescribed ideas about the maternal versus the paternal. That a brutal, male-dominated world – or deity - needs nice women, compassionate mothers, to make everything ok, to make God more approachable. In his iconic 1969 Â鶹Éç documentary series Civilisation, art historian Sir Kenneth Clarke describes how in the early 12th century, the virgin Mary was seen as the supreme protector of civilisation. ‘She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion,’ he said. I’m not convinced. I wonder whether we do all of us a disservice when we try to put men or women in boxes. And when – as people have done for centuries – we try to put God in a male-shaped hole. I’ve been wrestling with this, and rediscovering the richness and diversity of biblical descriptions of God. Alongside well-known verses that describe God in stereotypically male ways sits language about a God who is like a nursing mother, or a mother bear. The first word to describe God’s character in Exodus is ‘compassionate’. The Hebrew word used there is rakhum, which relates to the word for womb. Sheinbaum, who is also the first Mexican president of Jewish descent, has promised to be ‘the bravest president’, as she bids to tackle violence, drugs and crime. For the sake of all those who suffer because of these – and who the Virgin of Guadalupe is believed to protect - let’s hope that nothing – not least Sheinbaum’s gender – holds her back from succeeding.