The New Yorker: The Women Who Want to Be Priests
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 at the gates of the Vatican—a bold move, given that the police take security around the Holy City seriously. McElwee told me, “I figure, the biggest threat to the Vatican is a woman’s body and voice, so let’s use our bodies and our voices.” She was delighted when, in 2018, Pope Benedict’s personal secretary told the press, “I am of course aware that there is a noisy movement which has as its main ideological goal the fight for the female priesthood.” McElwee told herself, “That’s us—let’s be a noisy movement!”