Called into question
The Danube Seven are not the first women to have been ordained priests. There is strong evidence that women functioned as priests in the south of Italy and Sicily between the second and ninth centuries.
In the 14th century, St Catherine of Siena had a calling to the priesthood which was not fulfilled.
Her spiritual adviser, Raymund of Capua, wrote: 'She many times ... thought of imitating St Euphrosyne, whose name she had been given, who had gone into a monastery dressed in men's clothing, so that she could go into distant parts, pretending to be a man ... and help towards the salvation of souls.'
The late 19th-century French saint, Thérèse of Lisieux, also expressed a desire to be a priest, saying she had a 'deep Catholic sense' that women had the right to be ordained.
In 1970s communist Czechoslovakia, several women were ordained and operated clandestinely until the collapse of the regime in 1989. Their arguments that they had tried to outwit communism fell on deaf ears in the Vatican.
The most high-profile recruit of recent years is the Irish singer Sinead O'Connor, who was ordained in April 1999 by the leader of the Tridentine Order of Mater Dei, a quasi-Catholic sect in Ireland. She became Mother Bernadette Maria O'Connor, and later became an archdeacon.
In the 14th century, St Catherine of Siena had a calling to the priesthood which was not fulfilled.
Her spiritual adviser, Raymund of Capua, wrote: 'She many times ... thought of imitating St Euphrosyne, whose name she had been given, who had gone into a monastery dressed in men's clothing, so that she could go into distant parts, pretending to be a man ... and help towards the salvation of souls.'
The late 19th-century French saint, Thérèse of Lisieux, also expressed a desire to be a priest, saying she had a 'deep Catholic sense' that women had the right to be ordained.
In 1970s communist Czechoslovakia, several women were ordained and operated clandestinely until the collapse of the regime in 1989. Their arguments that they had tried to outwit communism fell on deaf ears in the Vatican.
The most high-profile recruit of recent years is the Irish singer Sinead O'Connor, who was ordained in April 1999 by the leader of the Tridentine Order of Mater Dei, a quasi-Catholic sect in Ireland. She became Mother Bernadette Maria O'Connor, and later became an archdeacon.

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