Since their clandestine ordinations on a boat on the Danube in 2002, Catholic women priests have been challenging the Vatican to denounce its misogyny. For the first time, women priests have succeeded in obtaining a dialogue with the Vatican, prompting cardinals and Pope Francis to take a stand on the forbidden subject of women’s ordination.
We follow three committed women in their quest to change doctrine. Jacqueline Straub, a Swiss theologian who feels a real vocation to be a priest, has been writing relentlessly to successive popes for fifteen years, pleading for gender equality in the Church and for permission to be ordained. Christina Moreira, a French-Spanish rebel, was ordained in catacomb, following in the footsteps of the Danube “clandestine ordinations” which, since 2002, have seen the emergence of over 300 women priests worldwide. Despite being excommunicated, she continues to exercise her priesthood in her Spanish community. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Myra Brown, an African-American priest, heads a parish of 1,500 faithful, defying prohibitions with unshakeable faith.
Together, these women propose an investigation into the heart of the Vatican, the last bastion of institutional misogyny, defying centuries of tradition, revisiting sacred texts and dismantling the theological, political and cultural arguments behind this unjust ban. For them, the issue of female ordination is the first step towards wider change within the Church: opening priests up to marriage, combating gender discrimination and accepting homosexual unions.