section_path: Holy mysteries (sacraments)/Holy orders
section_name: Holy orders
paragraph_text: Holy orders
  
  Widowed priests and deacons may not remarry and it is common for such members of the clergy to retire to a monastery (see clerical celibacy). This is also true of widowed wives of clergy, who do not remarry and become nuns when their children are grown. Only men are allowed to receive holy orders, although deaconesses had both liturgical and pastoral functions within the church.
  
  In 2016, the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria voted to reinstate the female diaconate; in the following year, it ordained six sub-deaconesses in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2024 the Patriarchate ordained its first female deacon, Angelic Molen, in Zimbabwe, making her the first female deacon in the Eastern Orthodox Church. This move was met with criticism from other autocephalous Orthodox church leaders, such as the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America 's Metropolitan Saba Esber, and Archpriest John Whiteford of the ROCOR, who criticized the move as being politically motivated and did not accurately reflect the historical use of deaconesses in the Eastern Orthodox Church.