Rebellious North Carolina Catholic group defies Vatican's ban on ordaining female priests

A rebel Catholic group has ordained a 64-year-old woman to be a female priest in the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, in defiance of the Vatican's long-standing ban on ordaining women to the clergy.

Abigail Eltzroth, a divorced mother of two grown children, was ordained on Sunday by the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests (ARCWP), which is opposed to the Church's ban on female clergy.

The ordination ceremony was held in Asheville at Jubilee! a non-denominational faith community, and it was presided by Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan, the Charlotte Observer reported.

David Hains, the spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte, said that the ordination will not be recognized by the church, adding that Catholics who receive the sacrament from a female priest would be committing a sin.

"I hope that Catholics in the diocese will understand that it would be sinful to receive a fake sacrament from a woman priest and that includes attending a fake Mass," Hains said.

Eltzroth was the second woman to be ordained by the group in North Carolina. She expressed her intentions to start a Catholic worship community in Asheville.

"It's time for a change and we're in the forefront, leading the charge. We expect that eventually everybody is going to follow us," said Eltzroth, who has previously served as a prison chaplain and a pastor of two churches in Nebraska.

She noted that she invited Bishop Peter Jugis, who heads the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte, to her ordination, but she received no response.

The ARCWP has ordained 250 female priests in 10 countries, with 65 of them serving in "inclusive churches" in the U.S., according to a news release from the group.

A Pew Research Poll conducted in 2015 has indicated that six in 10 American Catholics are in favor of allowing women to be Catholic priests, but the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy has stood by its longtime prohibition on the ordination of women to the clergy.

In 2007, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Pope Benedict XVI, decreed automatic excommunication on anyone "who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive a sacred order."

Last year, Pope Francis suggested that the ban on female priests would likely last forever. He cited the 1994 apostolic letter written by Pope John Paul II which stated that ordaining women was not possible because Jesus only chose men to be his 12 apostles.

Eltzroth, who grew up Presbyterian but became Catholic in her 50s, said she expects to be excommunicated by the Church.

"I'm sure that I will be (excommunicated) if I haven't been already. But there are plenty of saints who have been excommunicated. So that's not going to stop us," she said.