A planned ordination ceremony of ten women as Catholic Priests at an undisclosed site this Saturday has shaken the male-dominated Catholic Church to its foundations, reports said on Thursday.
All known so far was that a press conference about the ordination would be ”half an hour’s drive west of Linz”.
This indicated the press conference and ceremony itself might be aboard a ship on the Danube River, said the newspaper Standard.
Catholic dignitaries have angrily denounced the much-publicised ceremony as illegal and ”null and void”.
Archconservative Bishop of St Poelten Kurt Krenn raised the possibility of excommunicating all involved in it. The Munich Archdiocese in Germany said the whole thing was ”a hoax by a sect”.
The ”bishop” who was to ordinate the women was not a member of the Catholic Church at all, but a certain ”Monsignore Romulo Braschi” notorious as a faith healer, expert on ”karmic restoration” and ”spiritual cleansing”, charged the diocese.
It claimed he had ”relieved some of his victims of large sums of money”.
However, the identity of the Catholic bishop – real or bogus – to ordinate the women is still not clear on Thursday.
Originally it was reported the ceremony would be conducted by Californian Bishop Peter Hickman who describes himself as ”old-Catholic”, but this was later cast in doubt.
Latest reports said that the bishop conducting the ordination would appear at the press conference Saturday afternoon.
In Linz, Bishop Maximilian Aichern sent a letter to all priests in his diocese pointing out the planned ceremony violated church law and threatened the unity of the church.
Representative of the group who are to be ordained, former nun Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, said: ”We don’t want to put ourselves outside the church. Under no circumstances do we want a schism or a new church”.
Rules were being broken, but they were ”rules of discipline, not of faith”.
The female candidates for the priesthood had undergone three years training, and were taking the step to ”protest against a men’s church discriminating against women”.
Mayr-Lumetzberger, who is now married and a teacher by profession, said she expected about 250 paying guests at the press conference.
The report in the Standard said that whatever else the organisers could be accused of, it was not lack of business sense.
Each guest would be charged 100 euros ($99) in advance.
Journalists wanting a press photo might have to pay considerably more than that, perhaps 850 euros per picture. – Sapa-DPA