Pope Francis, Time magazine's Person of the Year, 2013. (AP)

(CNSNews.com) -- Pope Francis, Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” and a leader often praised by liberal Catholics for his apparently more open demeanor, said there would not be female cardinals in the Catholic Church because women must be “valued” and not “clericalised.”

In a Dec. 14 interview with Vatican Insider, the Pope was asked about his recent document, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), and specifically, “May I ask you if the Church will have women cardinals in the future?”

Pope Francis said, “I don’t know where this idea sprang from. Women in the Church must be valued, not ‘clericalised.’ Whoever thinks of women as cardinals suffers a bit from clericalism.”

In Evangelii Gaudium, the Pope wrote, “The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion, but it can prove especially divisive if sacramental power is too closely identified with power in general.”

As for a woman being a cardinal, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan said it was “theoretically” possible and added, according to U.S. Catholic, “You know, in fact, get this, and I’ve heard it from more than one person, that one time somebody said to Blessed John Paul II, ‘You should make Mother Teresa of Calcutta a cardinal.’ ... And the pope said, ‘I asked her. She doesn’t want to be one.’”