NY Times: Pope Leo’s Classmates Drew Ire of Church with Protest for Women

As the 17 young men preparing to be ordained as Catholic priests entered the sanctuary at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Chicago, they each pinned a tiny light-blue ribbon to their white robes. The gesture was small but explosive: It signified their belief that women, too, should be allowed into the priesthood…

…The Catholic Church said at the time that only men could be ordained as deacons and priests, a doctrine it maintains to this day. But in the 1970s, many in the church saw glimmers of hope. Propelled by feminist ideals, determined nuns and others had begun strategizing. One national group, the Women’s Ordination Conference, organized at a meeting on C.T.U.’s campus in 1976 after a conference the previous year in Detroit attended by 1,200 people, according to records in C.T.U.’s archives.

“Those were the years when a lot of people thought there was a possibility that things were going to change,” said Sister Dianne Bergant, a faculty member who arrived at C.T.U. in 1978. “There was an openness.”

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