Nine students of Theology at the University of Freiburg (Germany), who last year applied to enter a Catholic seminary to demand women’s access to the priesthood, will receive the “Trumpet of Jericho” award on October 16, granted by several reformist organizations from Austria and Germany.
The young women submitted a collective application in the spring of 2025 to be admitted to the Collegium Borromaeum, the seminary of the Archdiocese of Freiburg. At the time, they themselves acknowledged that they knew their petition would not succeed, but explained that their aim was to publicly denounce the fact that women cannot access priestly ministry in the Catholic Church.
The award will be presented by the movements Wir sind Kirche (“We Are Church”), Pfarrer-Initiative (“Priests’ Initiative”), Laieninitiative (“Lay Initiative”) and Priester ohne Amt (“Priests without Ministry”), which for years have promoted changes in the doctrine and discipline of the Church, including the priestly ordination of women.
A campaign organized to challenge Church discipline
The initiative was driven by the platform «Mein Gott diskriminiert nicht» (“My God Does Not Discriminate”), which encouraged the students to submit their seminary applications as a public act of protest. Some of them even chose to anonymize part of the documentation submitted to avoid possible academic or professional repercussions.
After the applications were submitted, the auxiliary bishop of Freiburg and head of priestly formation, Monsignor Christian Würtz, met with the students. According to the archdiocese, the meeting took place in a climate of dialogue, although the prelate recalled that the question of women’s priesthood is determined by the Church’s current doctrine.
Support from reformist sectors
In addition to the group of students, the award will also honor the Benedictine Philippa Rath, one of the main advocates for women’s access to ordained ministries in Germany. The religious sister has been actively involved in the German Synodal Way and in the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), two of the main forums from which reforms in the Church are promoted.
The organizers justify the granting of the award by the commitment of the honorees to “equality between women and men” within the Catholic Church.
A question on which the Magisterium has spoken definitively
The demand for women’s priesthood contrasts with the constant teaching of the Magisterium. In the apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, published in 1994, Saint John Paul II declared that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women” and stated that this doctrine must be held definitively by all the faithful.
Subsequently, the then Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith confirmed the definitive character of this teaching, specifying that it belongs to the deposit of faith. Since then, none of the pontiffs—Benedict XVI, Francis, or Leo XIV—has modified this doctrine.
Germany keeps open a debate that Rome considers closed
The granting of this award reflects the persistence of a segment of German Catholicism in reopening issues that the Holy See considers doctrinally resolved. In recent years, the Synodal Way has promoted proposals in favor of the ordination of women, the revision of priestly celibacy, and changes in Catholic sexual morality—initiatives that have prompted repeated warnings from Rome about the need to preserve ecclesial communion and respect the limits of the authority of particular Churches.
All of this coincides with a profound crisis of vocations in Germany. The number of seminarians and priestly ordinations continues to decline, and several dioceses have closed or transformed their seminaries into models of shared formation with lay theology students. In this context, the demand for women’s priesthood continues to occupy a prominent place on the agenda of reformist sectors, even though the Church’s doctrine on this issue remains unchanged.