The textbook answer, not that I am agreeing with it, is that no women priests is not a choice that the Catholic Church makes, but rather a reflection of received wisdom and ground truth. The same way perhaps a man is understood to be unable to get pregnant, a woman is understood to be unable to perform the sacraments. Or as John Paul II stated in 1994, “the church has no authority whatsoever to ordain women” even if it wanted to

Many Catholic believers are huge stickers for tradition. The previous Pope didn't go nearly so far as to allow female clergy, and he was not viewed with respect by many conservative Catholics. If the Pope declared that the church must allow female clergy, and if that didn't cause a literal schism, he would nevertheless lose the respect of most Catholics who didn't already agree with him.

If the Pope decides that it doesn't actually accomplish much good to force the issue when Catholics as a whole aren't ready for it, he could either try to advance women's rights without tipping the boat over, or he could just not bother.

This Pope is choosing to try to be a voice for good, and seems to do so from a deep desire for moral justice in an imperfect world. I'm grateful for that.

That reads a bit like: an equal role in external politics, but not in internal church politics. It’s hard to have a role in politics if you don’t have a voice.

Your argument is a bit stretched. Women had and have a principal role in catholicism, the fact that cannot be priest is not that important or seen as discrimination.

In this case spiritual and political are one in the same.

You speak as if the Pope can just change that unilaterally, with no cost.

Now, I don't know if Pope Leo actually believes in the full equality of men and women or if he's really being a hypocrite here. It's fully possible that you're absolutely right to scoff at him for it.

But the thing is, the limitation of priesthood to men in the Roman Catholic Church is such a deeply ingrained thing, it would be very, very hard for a single Pope to change it, especially early on in his papacy. If one wanted to, one of the first things he'd have to do would be...

...why, it would be to release an encyclical talking about the equality of men and women. Whether that was its core message or not.