In the News

At the end of the first public day of the fall general assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, it’s hard not to feel that one has attended the church’s version of the Iowa caucuses. All the heavy hitters of both parties are gathered in one place at one time, and journalists are…
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As bishops gathered in Baltimore this week to begin their November conference, protesters on both sides of the issue gathered to encourage the assembly members to either vote for or against the proposed document, which the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine chairman said received more than 100 pages of comments and went through several revisions over…
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Protests are common at gatherings of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which often touch on national politics or attract heavy media scrutiny, such as during the height of the Catholic sex abuse crisis. But this year’s annual fall U.S. bishops’ gathering in Baltimore, convened Nov. 15-18, is set to host at least two unusually…
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We remember WOC board member Marion Flynn for her generosity of Spirit, her big heart, and her unwavering support of the Women’s Ordination Conference. Read her obituary here.

When asked why she has chosen to be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest — thus breaking the Catholic Church’s ban on the ordination of women and crossing the threshold of formal excommunication — Anne Tropeano’s response is simple. “God is asking me to do this,” she says. “God is calling me to be ordained…
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Anne Tropeano is set to be ordained Saturday as a Catholic priest, then automatically excommunicated from the Church. Tropeano, a 47-year-old grants manager with the United Way of Central New Mexico, insists she has been called by God to the priesthood. She said this week her planned act stems from frustration with the sexism of…
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The ethnographic work Womanpriest: Tradition and Transgression in the Contemporary Roman Catholic Church by Jill Peterfeso is one of the most comprehensive studies of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement. The book thoughtfully wades through the “unfolding case study” of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests in the U.S. as the movement negotiates its relationship with Rome, Catholicism and priesthood as a…
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Just hours after Pope Francis addressed Catholics in Slovakia, more than 420 Catholics from all over the world gathered in an online event to celebrate Ludmila Javorova, the first publicly known woman priest ordained in the modern era. In 1970, Bishop Felix Maria Davidek ordained her to serve the underground church in Czechoslovakia, where communist leaders were killing and…
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The lay-led Root and Branch Synod, which is taking place online and in Bristol until Sunday 12 September, began last night with a panel discussion on feminism in the Church and clerical reform. “To suggest that God is incapable of ordaining women is inconsistent with our conception of an omniscient, omnipotent God,” said Kate McElwee,…
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A network of church-reform organizations around the world have been pushing for women’s ordination for decades, and in recent years they have become feistier. The Women’s Ordination Conference, which was founded in the mid-seventies, has been headed since 2017 by an energetic thirty-five-year-old American, Kate McElwee, who is based in Rome. She has organized protests…
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