Welcome to Catholic Women’s Ordination
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CWO began in March 1993 as a national (UK) group of women and men who care deeply about the Roman Catholic Church. We want to be a part of building a church community that truly lives the justice demanded by Jesus; a justice which demands that women be equal with men.
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Women equal with men means not only that women have the opportunity to fulfil their own vocation, but also that the Church community benefits from their experience and their strengths in the ministerial priesthood.
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We are a forum to examine, challenge and develop the current understanding of priesthood. We aim to achieve the ordination of women to a renewed priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church.
CWO members were part of a WOW steering group meeting in Bingen 14 -17 September 2025. Inspired by Hildegarde, we composed an open letter to Pope Leo and sent on 17th September, Hildegarde's feast day. You can read it here
Catholic Women's Ordination
Challenging Institutional Misogyny in the Roman Catholic Church
Caste Out!
CWO talk with Miriam Duignan
4th October 2025
Miriam Duignan, is Executive Director of Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, appointed in 2024 by Dr John Wijngaards to be his successor after volunteering as communications director since 2010. She also coordinates communications and action planning for Women's Ordination Worldwide.
Caste Out!
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church - the clerical caste - is increasingly justifying the exclusion of women from ministry claiming that ordination risks 'clericalising women'. This new 'bogeyman' is gaining strength because Catholics everywhere are seeing through the Vatican's bogus theology and know there is - and never was - a valid reason to banish one half of the Church from full and equal participation. In our Annual Gathering this year, we will be examining this new line of attack, what 'clericalism' means when applied to women, why it works to silence those supporting women priests and how to counter this argument.
As a student in Trinity College Dublin, Soline Humbert experienced a call to the priesthood in the Catholic Church, which she was unable to pursue because of the ban on women’s ordination. She found herself on a collision course with a powerful church hierarchy intent on quashing any such vocation, and was even warned of excommunication if she persisted.
In this ground-breaking memoir, Soline candidly shares her struggles, her dark nights of the soul and her ecstasies, as well as her decades-long effort to bring about an end to women’s exclusion from the priesthood. She is told again and again: ‘The door to women’s ordination was shut and would remain shut.’ And that was that.
But as the Catholic Church continues its decline in weekly Mass attendance, its huge drop in male celibate priestly vocations and waning cultural significance, as it reels from decades of scandals due to child sexual abuse by clergy, it is becoming increasingly clear that the time for change is at hand.
A Divine Calling is an inspirational story of hope, determination, courage and one woman’s passionate desire to make a difference.
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We mourn the death of Pope Francis.
He rejected so much of what had gone before and lived in a way that showed humility. He made an eloquent and impassioned response to the global climate and ecological crises and exhortation to action through “Laudate Si”.
He was not afraid to enter the political arena where he saw injustice. He was brave and bold in challenging governments and especially those legislating against refugees and asylum seekers. He called for compassion. His last Easter address contained the words “How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized, and migrants!”
It is extraordinary, then, that his revolutionary thinking did not extend to women. Women seeking sacramental ordination in the Catholic Church have been rejected. His devotion to St Thérèse of Lisieux is widely known and yet he ignored the part of her autobiography where she describes her call to priesthood. She even rejoiced that she would die before the age when she could test her vocation as it would be so painful for her if she could not do this. Women called to priesthood feel real pain and Francis has not recognised this nor sought to alleviate it.
We thank him for his service as Pope, and pray for a continuation of a Papacy that is outward looking, inclusive, just, and transparent. This is the Jubilee Year of Hope.The Pope said himself recently that kindness was an important aspect of how we live our lives of Hope. May his successor continue along the same path. May Pope Francis rest in peace.
The CWO Prayer
Moved by a compulsion of the Holy Spirit,
we cannot remain ignorant of this injustice in our midst.
We long for all humanity to be acknowledged as equal,
particularly among your community of the church,
so we pray grieving for the lost gifts of so many women.
We ask you, God of all peoples,
to bring insight and humility
to all those in positions of dominance,
and an understanding that the ascended Lord called us all to act
doing Christ's work here and now.
We ask this of you, God our Creator,
Jesus our Redeemer, Spirit our Sustainer
