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Vatican's scourge

Sophie Arie

The Catholic Church forbids woman priests, but that has not stopped some from being ordained

ROME: They say they do it with a woman's touch. Rather than stiffly pouring holy water on a baby's heads at arm's length while reciting the lines and trying not to get their robes wet, women priests take a warmer, more hands-on approach. They let the babies splash around in the font for a bit first, and have even been known to hold them in their arms if they cry during the ceremony.

That is why, they say, so many people are asking for women priests to baptise, marry, bury and take confession — even if the Catholic Church does not officially acknowledge that such "priests" exist.

"It's a bit like going to see a doctor," says Patricia, who has climbed the clandestine ladder to become a bishop since she was ordained in Germany in 2003. "There are times when you'd just prefer it to be a woman."

On the basis that the Vatican is out of touch and the majority of Catholics would be quite happy to have women in the pulpit, nine Canadian and American women are to be ordained on July 25 in a public ceremony on a boat on the St. Lawrence river that marks the border between their two countries. Earlier this month, in Lyons, a married 56-year-old French woman realised her lifelong dream to become a priest. Another 60 women priests from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Holland and Latvia are in the pipeline.

They are being trained and ordained by the so-called Danube Seven — a group of seven women who were ordained on a boat in 2002 by an official, but rebellious male bishop from Argentina. When he heard about it, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who has since become Pope Benedict XVI, excommunicated the women en masse.

"At my age, what have I got to be afraid of?" says Genevieve Beney, who was ordained in Lyons on July 9, also on a boat, which is apparently a Christian symbol of fluidity and change. "Excommunication is a sanction, but not an exclusion. I am staying in the Roman Catholic Church. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong. I'm waiting for Benedict XVI to open up."

Not much chance of that. The Vatican says that it is God's will that women should not be priests. Women cannot be the descendents of the apostles because (whatever Dan Brown may say in The Da Vinci Code) the 12 were all men. The new pontiff himself has just published his first book as Pope, Benedict's Europe, in which he rules out women's ordination as one of the follies of a false concept of liberty that is rampant on the continent.

The Church looks on these protest ordinations with such disdain that it has stopped bothering to excommunicate those involved. Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, explained recently that in the same way that it is biologically impossible for a man to conceive, it is theologically impossible for a woman to be a priest. "As a man, I cannot conceive... is that unfair?" he asked.

The priestesses say the Vatican's stance is based on man-made rules set down in canon law. "They say Jesus only ordained men. But Jesus ordained nobody," says Joy Barnes, director of the U.S.-based campaign group, Women's Ordination Conference. "The Vatican has a lot to lose. Men have a lot to lose. It's just about power." Campaigners say that up to 70 per cent of Catholics in industrialised countries and a smaller majority in developing countries would be quite happy to see women become priests.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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