Danube Seven

The Danube Seven are a group of seven women from Germany, Austria and the United States who were ordained as priests on a ship cruising the Danube river on 29 June 2002 by Rómulo Antonio Braschi, Ferdinand Regelsberger, and a third unknown bishop.

The seven women are: Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, Adelinde Theresia Roitinger, Gisela Forster, Iris Muller, Ida Raming, Pia Brunner and Angela White (the last a pseudonym for Dagmar Braun Celeste, the Austrian born former first lady of Ohio in the United States^[1]).

Braschi, an Independent Catholic bishop whose own ordination is in the line of apostolic succession and thus considered valid by the Roman Catholic Church, was excommunicated by the latter.^[2]

The women's ordinations were not, however, recognized as valid by the Roman Catholic Church,^[3] although the women (and their successors) consider their own ordinations to be valid and even studied in a three year program, designed by Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, prior to their ordinations.^[4][5]

Legal consequences and responses

On 10 July 2002, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a monitum against the women, warning that they would be excommunicated if they did not admit the invalidity of the ordinations and repent.^[6] As a consequence of this violation of canon law, specifically canons 1008-1009 and 1024-1025, and their refusal to repent, the Vatican excommunicated the women.^[7] The women asked the Vatican to revoke the excommunication, but this request was denied in Decree on the Attempted Ordination of Some Catholic Women.^[8]

See also

• Ordination of women in the Catholic Church

• Catholic Apostolic Charismatic Church of Jesus the King