An activist group hoping to pressure the Roman Catholic church into dropping its long-standing prohibition barring women from the priesthood says it ordained three women on Sunday.

Church officials did not recognize the ordination, and the Vatican has previously warned that women taking part in ordination ceremonies will be excommunicated.

The group known as Roman Catholic Womenpriests held the ceremony at the Church of the Covenant, a Protestant Church in Boston.

The group said the three women — Gloria Carpeneto of Baltimore, Judy Lee of Fort Myers, Fla., and Gabriella Velardi Ward of New York City — are responding to a heartfelt call to serve the church as priests.

A fourth woman, Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of Newton, N.J., was ordained as a deacon, the group said.

The Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement decrying the ceremony.

"Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church," the archdiocese said.

The group says the women who are ordained remain loyal members of the church and will act as priests whether they are excommunicated or not.

Sunday's ordination ceremony was performed by two women the group describes as bishops — Ida Raming of Struttgart, Germany, and Dana Reynolds from California.

The ceremony "is not in compliance with their man-made rules, but it's certainly in compliance with the Roman Catholic ordination rituals because our bishops were ordained by all-male Roman Catholic bishops who are in good standing with the church," as provided by the church's ordination rituals, said Bridget Mary Meehan, the group's spokeswoman.

The group, which was formed in 2002, has conducted similar ceremonies in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

In March, the archbishop of St. Louis excommunicated three women — two Americans and a South African who were part of the Womenpriests movement — for participating in a woman's ordination.

Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, has rebuffed calls to change traditional church teachings on the requirement that priests be male.

Catholics who are excommunicated cannot receive sacraments. The penalty can be lifted if those who have been punished are sincerely repentant.

STEVE LeBLANC

Three US women priests to be ordained, excommunicated

Three women are to be ordained as priests Sunday here in one of American's most Catholic cities, but they will face automatic excommunication by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese.

The trio is to be ordained in a ceremony performed by a woman at a Protestant church affiliated to the US Presbyterian Church and the United Church of Christ, in Boston's first female ordination.

The move has angered the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, which has sent out an email to local priests reminding them of Vatican law that women are allowed to have key roles within the church, but cannot become priests.

The Archdiocese says the three women will be automatically excommunicated. Historically, the Vatican's position has been that women cannot become priests because Jesus did not have female apostles.

However, the women say they are united in the belief of being called to the priesthood and compelled to resist what they believe to be wrong church teaching.

"We're part of a prophetic tradition of disobeying unjust law," said Gabriella Velardi Ward, 61, a New York based architect.

"Excommunication or not, I will still be able to serve the people of God," she told the Boston Globe.

The two others are Gloria Carpeneto of Maryland and Mary Ann McCarthy Schoettly of New Jersey.

Dana Reynolds of California, a women consecrated as a bishop in Germany earlier this year, will perform the ceremony.

Reynolds and the others are members of the organization Roman Catholic Womenpriests, holding ordinations for women since 2002. The organization reports 28 women Catholic priests in the United States.

The organization claims its ordinations are valid because its first bishops were ordained by Catholic bishops in good standing. The identity of the bishops is kept secret to protect them from being sanctioned by the Vatican.

The Church of the Covenant on Newbury Street in Boston's Back Bay, led by Rev. Jennifer Wegler-McNelly, offered support by renting its historic edifice with Tiffany windows depicting women of the Bible.

However, the Archdiocese was stern in its email warning.

"Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church."

Referring to "the loving ministry of Jesus Christ, we pray for those who have willingly fallen away from the church by participating in such activities."

The Boston ordination ceremony is scheduled to coincide with the first joint conference of four organizations advocating for the admission of married men and also women into the priesthood. The meeting is expected to draw 200 participants.

Marcia Scott-Harrison

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Lipizzan horses' white colour due to mutated gene: study

The white coat of the Lipizzan horses performing at Vienna's prestigious Spanish riding school is caused by a mutated gene, a new study showed Sunday, solving a decades-old mystery over the horses' colour.

White and grey horses, including Lipizzans, are born with a darker coat but lose their colour between the age of six and eight due to chromosome mutations, Austrian and Swedish researchers found in the study published Sunday in the scientific journal Nature Genetics.

These genetic changes cause pigment-producing melanocyte cells to be produced more rapidly in these horses so that the stock is quickly used up and the horses lose their pigmentation, according to one of the study's co-authors, Monika Seltenhammer of Vienna's University of Veterinary Medicine.

The study also found that the same chromosome was responsible for the horses' heightened risk of melanoma, a serious skin cancer.

Between 70 and 80 percent of grey and white horses aged 15 or older develop skin disease, said Leif Andersson of the department of medical biochemistry and microbiology at Sweden's Uppsala University.

But the horses are hardly at risk, as the disease cells do not spread as quickly as in humans, said Seltenhammer. >>>>