Female Roman Catholic Priests Lead a New Kind of Church

Rosemary Ganley
The Peterborough Examiner
May 15, 2019

Rev. Roberta Fuller is part of a small group of women in Canada who have been ordained as Catholic priests. She holds mass at a United church near Bethany each week. RON PIETRONIRO/METROLAND

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At a recent course I was teaching, Women and God Talk, at Traill College, a gracious, well-spoken woman came in and introduced herself as an ordained Roman Catholic priest, living in Bethany.

That got everyone's interest.

Roberta Fuller belongs to a community of strong women who have, since 2002, defied Vatican rules and been ordained to ministry in a new form. There are 300 such women now, worldwide.

Their work has caused the church to react swiftly, strongly and negatively. They usually receive a letter of excommunication within two weeks from the local bishop.

It began when a South African nun-professor Patricia Fresen of the Dominican order lost her patience with the slow pace of any church movement toward gender equality, and joined a group in Germany in 2000. Fresen had been teaching theology and homiletics (how to preach), in a South African seminary, showing young men what scriptures to choose and how to speak at services, but she herself was barred from preaching in public.

With great persistence, she went to Europe, and found a male bishop willing to ordain her, a man whose name was to be kept secret until his death. It was important for the rebelling women to be in the apostolic line of succession, even for the resistance movement, which was gaining steam. Seven ordinations of women were held on a boat on the Danube River.
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