United States: An Action Group Calls for the Priestly Ordination of Women

About fifteen members of an American action group, the Women's Ordination Conference, advocating the ordination of women, went to the Vatican on October 17, 2011.  Armed with banners and chanting religious songs, the little group, mostly women, some of whom had put on priest's albs, made their way up the Via della Conciliazione, to St. Peter's Square.

The action group wished to present a petition signed by 15,000 persons in favor of the priestly ordination of women in the Catholic Church and a letter from the American priest Roy Bourgeois, calling for an end to the exclusion of women from the priesthood.  “I have come to Rome to put a fundamental question to the leaders of the Church:  how can we, as men, say that our own vocation to God is authentic, but not that of women?” asks the 75-year-old activist cleric, in a letter published by the press and republished by Imedia. (sources: apic/imedia – DICI#243, October 28, 2011)