john i said no throne and no coronation. >> we have sister mary ann walsh. i ag

in rome, we have john allen, of course, cnn's senior vatican analyst, and also sister mary ann walshfor the u.s. conference of catholic bishops and right here on set with us is cnn's chris cuomo who was leading our coverage of the conclave last week at the vatican. >> let's go back to something for a moment. edward you said that 1,000 years had to go by for the pope to offer an outward gesture of a sign of peace with the eastern christian leader. why? and how significant is it? because there are no accidents. everything that's happening here today is by design. so, what's the headline there? >> when constantinople broke from rome, and so since then, it's been not animosity but not exactly an ecumenical dialogue as you would like. so to have him then show up here, uninvited, invited, we're not sure. no formal invitations went out. maybe he just came on his own. but to have him here is symbolic and it's real because it hasn't happened. and for me, already he has ecumenical outreach in his own country, among jews, other states. i think we're going to see a lot more from this pope. we're

sister mary ann walsh concedes the church hierarchy is male dominated but women do occupy important layons in catholic social and relief organizations. >> if you take the issue off the table if you take ordination off the table, for example, in the u.s., our statistics are better than the department of labor when it comes to women in executive positions. >> reporter: a bit of female advice would help the church steer its way through troubled waters, says professor of the gr gregorian college. >> when you listen to women especially and listen to their perspective and i think, you know, a lot of the ways that this crisis was handled in the church, you know to have had more women's input in dealing with it would have been a better thing. >> reporter: but for now, women have, at best, an indirect influence as the cardinal of portugal explains it. certainly the church is not a democratic society in the way civil society understands, he says. it's a hierarchy church, therefore, not everyone is equal. women's voices may be louder than before, but for now, the doors to this men's club reman fir