Ottawa, Canada - Nine North American Catholic women will be ordained priests or deacons next month in what will amount to a test of Pope Benedict's determination to enforce the Vatican's ban on women's ordination.
The July 25 ceremony will take place on a boat on the St. Lawrence River in a bid to be in international waters, the coordinator said on Tuesday, though the U.S.-Canadian border actually goes down the middle of the river.
In a further challenge to Vatican orthodoxy, the women may be married, divorced or remarried -- "as long as they're in a stable relationship or are a stable person," said U.S. activist Judith Johnson, who is organizing the ordination.
Eight of the women are American and one is Canadian.
The movement started with the ordination of seven women on the Danube River in Germany in 2002. Two of them, Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger of Austria and Gisela Forster of Germany, will be ordaining the four priests and five deacons on the St. Lawrence. The two say they have been made bishops by Catholic bishops in good standing with Rome.
But in 2003, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -- now Pope Benedict -- excommunicated the "Danube Seven."
The rebels' Web site says there have been no further excommunications even though more women were ordained deacons on the Danube in 2004. A further ordination ceremony is set to be held on a boat near Lyons, France, on July 2.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that women's ordination violates biblical commands, and the late Pope John Paul ruled in 1994 that the Vatican could not even consider the issue.
Johnson predicted that would change. "New changes don't come very quickly. It comes from the people," she told Reuters.