The women stood outside the gates of the Vatican dressed in cardinal red, each carrying a scarlet parasol emblazoned with a phrase of female empowerment. "Ordain Women", "Reform Means Women", "It's Reigning Men".

"We hoped our witness would provoke an awakening of their consciences that there are sisters who are outside who are not included in these conversations," organiser Kate McElwee told NCR. She was speaking after being released by the Italian police responsible for St Peter's Square security.

The women hailing from the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland had marched down Rome's Via della Conciliazione, the iconic street leading into St Peter's Square. They then walked to the piazza outside the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

As prelates trickled in for a two-day meeting on the church's governance, some smiled at the women and said hello. Others took leaflets from the advocates who asked them to "pray for your sisters outside".

Francis called the meeting of the world's cardinals to discuss Praedicate Evangelium, the apostolic constitution he released in March to reorganise the Vatican's central bureaucracy.

While the document explicitly allows women to serve as leaders of Vatican departments for the first time, McElwee said she thought it was an injustice that no women were invited inside for the two days of meetings.

"We wanted our witness to stir that awareness in our brothers in Christ who are in the room," said McElwee, the executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference.

However, 20 minutes after the advocates began their protest, they were approached by Italian police who asked them to close their umbrellas.

They were then moved to a holding area where they had passports and phones confiscated. After an hour, they were taken to a nearby police station where they were held for another three hours.

After signing what McElwee described as "scores and scores" of documents agreeing to comply with an investigation, the seven women were released, with their umbrellas and materials held as evidence.

Miriam Duignan, a spokesperson for the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research and Women's Ordination Worldwide, was carrying a parasol reading "Sexism is a Cardinal Sin". She said, "It's 197 men talking about the future of the church, never mentioning women, and then seven women — completely harmless, carrying delicate little paper parasols — are so threatening to them that they had to wrongfully imprison us, humiliate us and try to intimidate us to never do it again".

"The reality is that we are a threat to the status quo," McElwee said.

Sources

National Catholic Reporter

Religion News Service

Above the image of one of the women priests were the words "some women disobey".

The putting up of the posters in Rome's Trastevere neighbourhood and near St Peter's was part of a "jubilee for women priests".

All of the women pictured are "essentially under excommunication", the Guardian reported.

Kate McElwee, co-executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference, said the metre-high posters are meant to celebrate female priests around the world.

They may help spur a dialogue with the Church about women's equality, she said.

Ms McElwee sees this as a "true blind spot for Pope Francis".

In 1994, St John Paul II declared "that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful".

Pope Francis has said the ordination of women as priests "cannot be done", citing St John Paul II.

The city of Rome agreed to put the women priest posters up.

Organisers said they had found an enthusiastic supporter within the city government who had promised to save "good space" for them even though they are competing with political posters before the upcoming mayoral election.

According to Ms McElwee, there are about 150 renegade female priests around the world.

Many of them were ordained after a group of women known as the Danube Seven were ordained illegally in 2002 by an Argentinian bishop.

The posters were created by Italian photographer Giulia Bianchi.

She said meeting a woman priest helped heal the "Catholic child inside herself" and "a lot of pain and scars I have from the official Church".

A petition calling on Pope Francis to lift the excommunications of women priests will be delivered by a woman priest to the Vatican on June 3.

Sources

• The Guardian
• Action Groundswell Movement
• Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Xania News