"Mercy", yea; love Pope Francis, yes. However there are element of "rightness", "wisdom," "time" that seem to escape this man: women. 
Curious that Winters begins this reflection on International Women's Day. 
There is nothing  wrong with a genuinely conservative church that respects a tried past, the vagaries of precipitous change,  a discerning venture into evolution. 
When the work of evolving thought, rightness, testing consequences, and discerning wisdom has already been done, that is when resistance to change is more rightly "intransigence"; when the exclusion and diminution of women is really "misogyny" and not tradition and scriptural justification.
The Vatican and hierarchy has not only been absent from but in utter opposition to the secular evolution of sane, rational evolution of women in society. Of course many "societies" have also resisted, been slow to evolve but being in that company is no forgiveness.
"History" shows no mercy; it has consequences.
We are at that point.