PHILADELPHIA (PA)
National Catholic Reporter
Thomas C. Fox | Sep. 11, 2015
Some 500 Catholic activists from around the globe will converge on Philadelphia for a three-day conference Sept. 18-20 to press for women’s rights in the church. They will meet one week before Pope Francis is set to step foot into the city.
The U.S.-based Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) is hosting the Women’s Ordination Worldwide meeting. The Women’s Ordination Conference formed 40 years back, in 1975, after a group of women’s ordination advocates met in Detroit. Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW), an assembly of international groups supporting women’s ordination, formed in 1996; the U.S. group is a member.
The three-day gathering will assess the place of women in church and society and develop plans to advance their Gospel-based justice agendas. Delegates will also assess advances and setbacks within the movement since the 1970s.
Among the speakers at next week’s gathering will be veteran Catholic feminists Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Mary Hunt, Mercy Sr. Theresa Kane and Loretto Sr. Maureen Fiedler. Delegates will also hear from:
Theologian and archeological researcher Dorothy Irvin;
British theologian Tina Beattie;
Australian historian Paul Collins;
Patricia Fresen, expelled from her order following her illicit ordination in 2004;
Kristina Keneally, a liberation theologian who writes on women’s issues;
Ursula King, who writes on women’s spirituality.
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