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Speakers
Rev. Janice Sevre-Duszynska
has been an activist for women priests since 1980. In 1998 she interrupted the ordination of a male candidate and asked the bishop to ordain her. In 2001 she was involved in installing the “Ordain Women” banner in seven languages on the edge of the Vatican and Rome. She led Women’s Ordination Conference’s Ministry of Irritation in witnessing at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. and in other cities, including Baltimore. As a peace activist she spent time in federal prison for calling for the closing of the School of Americas, which trained many Latin American human rights violators. She has also participated in numerous civil resistance actions. Ordained in 2008, she is the media representative for the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. She recently returned from a Women’s Ordination Worldwide gathering in Rome where she and another woman priest spoke to a senior Vatican official.
Fr. Roy Bourgeois
spent four years in the military, including one year in Vietnam. Founder of SOA Watch, Roy spent four years in prison for protesting the SOA at Ft. Benning, GA. He was a Maryknoll priest for 40 years. In 2012, Roy was expelled from the priesthood for his public support of the ordination of women. Roy is also very involved in the struggle for LGBT equality.
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Rev. Mary Kay Kusner
is a lifelong Catholic who is a married mother of four children. She has served as a chaplain in both hospice and palliative care for almost 30 years and currently works at University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics in Iowa City. In 2010, she was ordained a Roman Catholic Womanpriest enabling her to fulfill a vocation to serve her church sacramentally, spiritually and with a new vision for inclusivity. Her community named themselves Full Circle Catholic Church and defined their mission “to foster an open and affirming Catholic faith community where Christ’s life informs our conscience, inspires our liturgy and compels our service to others.” Mary Kay feels passionately about her role as a pioneer for equality in the Catholic church and seeks to live as a woman of integrity, vision and service so that “all may be one.”
Marion Flynn
studied theology in the 1970's - and was certain there would be a path to the priesthood, having been called at a very early age. She has worked as a banker and fundraiser, is active in her parish, and is honored, beyond words, to serve the cause of women's ordination. Marion lives in the Chicago area, but was born in Massachusetts. She holds a BA from Newton College of the Sacred Heart, and an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
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Mary Traxler
Mary Traxler is a junior music and psychology double major at Drake University. As a former Catholic school student, Mary considers herself a lapsed Catholic with hopes for Catholicism to become a more inclusive faith.
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Clio Cullison
is a Rhetoric & Printmaking major at Drake University involved in Voice of Choice, Student Activists for Gender Equality & the Middle East Peace and Prosperity Alliance. She’s interested in this panel because being raised Catholic was something that promoted her development into a young feminist, by both inspiring her social justice awareness and fueling some societal anger.
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