MISSOURI
KBIA
By MADELINE DUFEK & HANNAH SAULIC
In 1998, Janice Sevre-Duszynska stood up in the middle of an ordination service and shocked her entire congregation when she demanded the Bishop to ordain her into priesthood.
Sevre-Duszynska said the Bishop sounded like Darth Vader at the time, commanding her to go back to her seat and stop disrupting the service. However Sevre-Duszynska said she did not view her actions as disruptive. Rather, she said she was acting as the voice for all women.
While Sevre-Duszynska did not fulfill her dream of entering the priesthood at that service, she became an ordained priest on August 9, 2008 in Lexington, Kentucky.
Sevre-Duszynska visited Columbia on Wednesday to say mass at St. Francis House and screen the documentary “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican,” which focuses on the controversial movement of women seeking priesthood within the Catholic Church. …
For female priests, breaking through the ‘stained-glass ceiling’ means excommunication from the Catholic Church. For Sevre-Duszynska, this exclusion of women illustrates an injustice in the church.
“Pedophile priests; they’ve had a little slap on the hand by the Vatican, but they’ve not been excommunicated. But we women have been excommunicated, an excommunication we do not accept,” Sevre-Duszynska said.
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