3 women to be ordained Catholic priests in Boston

By Michael Paulson - Boston Globe
Friday, July 18, 2008 - Web Link
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July 18, 2008

Three aspiring Catholic priests will be anointed and prayed over this weekend in an ordination liturgy that will resemble the traditional in most ways but one: The three being ordained are women.

The ordination ceremony Sunday, at a historic Protestant church in the Back Bay, is the first such event to take place in Boston, one of the most Catholic cities in the nation.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, in accord with Vatican teaching, says the participants in the ordination ceremony will be automatically excommunicating themselves.

But the women being ordained say they are acting because they feel called to the priesthood and compelled to resist what they view as a wrong church teaching.

"We're part of a prophetic tradition of disobeying an unjust law," said Gabriella Velardi Ward, a 61-year-old Staten Island architect with two children and five grandchildren, who will be ordained along with Gloria Carpeneto of Baltimore and Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of Newton, N.J.

Ward said she has wanted to be a priest since age 5, and that she actively considered becoming a nun before deciding that the priesthood was her calling because she wants to be able to celebrate Catholic sacraments.

"Excommunication or not, I will still be a validly ordained priest and still will be able to serve the people of God," she said.