Self described Catholic Priest Victoria Rue hopes her trip to Indonesia will plant a seed that eventually sees the ordination of this country's first female priest.

VICTORIA RUE: (JP/A. Junaidi)

Speaking to a group of women's rights activists and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people gathered in Central Jakarta recently, Rue said the Roman Catholic Church has subjugated women for centuries and needed to change.

"Women have been thought of as evil, sinful and lustful, as representing only the body and not the spirit."

Rue, who is also a lecturing professor of comparative religion and women's studies at California's San Jose University, said women have been systematically excluded from positions of power in the Church.

She said when the Vatican allows women to become priests, it will make a profound difference in the world.

"I know women in Islam are working for leadership in Islam as well ... all the religions will benefit from the inclusion of women."

Rue was hosted in Indonesia by Kumpul, an umbrella organization supporting pluralism. During her time here she also traveled to Kampung Jati, a poor neighborhood in East Jakarta.

"I saw that for the last four years women have been leading this community, women have been working on the problems in this community with Kumpul education, sexuality issues, religious issues, understanding what power is and how to help change things.

"Indonesia is an incredibly diverse country," she said.

Herself a lesbian, Rue also champions the rights of the LGBT community.

"I spoke to a woman this morning who was going out to educate in a municipality that had passed a law against LGBT people. She was working with that community to educate that LGBT people are not evil, are not sinful, that they are human beings like all the rest of us."

She describes sexuality as an expression of God's love and holds regular mass with LGBT people in her home state of California.

Rue, who is also a member of Dignity, a group of progressive Catholics including feminists and sexual minorities, said she would like to see the institution open its doors of power to everybody.

Rue was ordained in 2005, along with eight other women, on the St Lawrence Seaway in Canada. They performed the ceremony on water because it was outside the jurisdiction of any Catholic diocese.

She was ordained by three female bishops who were themselves ordained by male bishops with good Vatican relations.

However, the male bishops would only ordain the women in secret.

"It was very *Da Vinci Code'!" said Rue, who was required to sign a document that said "when we die you can reveal our identities".

She describes her ordination as valid, but illegal in terms of church law: Catholic Cannon Law 10:25 prohibits women from becoming priests.

In May this year, the Vatican issued a statement saying that all ordained women -- and the men who ordained them -- were excommunicated from the church.

There are 54 ordained female Catholic priests and deacons in the United States; up from only nine in 2005. Rue said each of those women had a community within the Church.

But she is under no illusions about the degree of support that they have within the Vatican.

"Are we having an effect on the Vatican? Probably. Are we having an effect at the grass roots in the United States, that for me is the key question ... yes there we are having an effect.

"It's all growing -- there is mass, there are sacraments, there is counseling going on, there are woman priests who are chaplains in hospitals and prisons -- there is good work," Rue said.

She added a recent poll of Catholics in the U.S. found 70 percent in favor of ordaining women.

"The response of the various members of the hierarchy to that poll was, 'the church is not a democracy!'."

Rue said she wanted to be a Catholic Priest since she was little but did not think it was possible.

In the 1960's she began training to become a nun, but left the convent, and the Church, after one year. She said she left knowing that was not her "call".

Instead she moved into the theater and the women's rights movement. She has descried the theater as her church, "and the women's movement my congregation".

She came back to the church after watching socialist-style liberation theology in action in Nicaragua.

"My biggest belief is that the church will change because the spirit is within the people and outside the people, and larger than the people. The spirit will move and something will change.

"I believe the community Jesus founded was a community in which their was a table, men and women, old and young, people on the margins of society -- all were welcome at the table.

"That's the radical love of Jesus and that is the kind of community that I hope to always be a part of."

The writer is an intern with The Jakarta Post

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