Press Release/Fr. Bill Brennan, a 93 year-old Jesuit Co-Presides with Roman Catholic Woman Priest, Janice Sevre-Duszynska, ARCWP at Catholic Liturgy in Columbus, GA. on Nov. 17, 2012

Jesuit Bill Brennan and Janice Sevre-Duszynska, ARCWP, co-preside at liturgy sponsored by Progressive Catholic Coalition
Photos courtesy Bob Watkins

Father Bill Brennan's phone: 414-259-6385.
For more information on the importance of a male priest co-presiding with a
woman priest in the Roman Catholic Church today, call Bishop Bridget Mary
Meehan, 703-505-0004,
Janice Sevre-Duszysnska: 859-684-4247
www.arcwp.org


A local resident who is a peace activist and ordained Roman Catholic Woman
Priest co-presided at an inclusive Catholic liturgy with a male priest during
the annual School of the Americas Watch Vigil Nov. 16-18 in Columbus, GA.
Jesuit priest Bill Brennan, 93, of Milwaukee, WI, co-presided at a Catholic
liturgy with Janice Sevre-Duszynska, a peace activist and ordained Roman
Catholic Woman Priest, on Saturday, Nov. 17th. About 350 participated in the
Mass which was sponsored by the Progressive Catholic Coalition.
"Father Brennan is basically crossing the line in his support of women priests
in the Roman Catholic Church," said Sevre-Duszynska, a former Prisoner of
Conscience to close the SOA.
She was ordained a Roman Catholic Woman Priest on Aug. 9, 2008 at the Lexington
Unitarian Universalist Church by woman Bishop Dana Reynolds and the interfaith
community who laid hands on her in blessing.
Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois, the founder of the SOA Watch and friend of
Sevre-Duszynska, participated in her ordination. Bourgeois celebrated Eucharist
with the women at the table, laid hands on Sevre-Duszynska in blessing with her
community and gave a prophetic homily in support of women priests. He has faced
inquiry by the Vatican and his order since then but has refused to recant his
support of women priests. He has continued to promote women priests throughout
the country and world.
Last year Sevre-Duszynska co-presided at the SOA Watch Vigil liturgy with
Franciscan priest Jerry Zawada, 78, of Tuscon, AZ and Milwaukee, WI. He has also
been under investigation by the Vatican.
This weekend was the 22nd annual gathering of peacemakers from around the
country and world on Fort Benning Road in Columbus, GA. The SOA Watch is a
movement to close the School of the Americas. The SOA, a U.S. military training
school for Latin American soldiers located in Fort Benning,  GA, is better known
in Latin America as the "School of the Assassins. " The school is synonymous
with torture and repression around the world. Its graduates have long been
associated with military coups, human rights abuses and the suppression of
popular movements. Hundreds of thousands, according to SOA Watch, have been
tortured, raped, murdered and "disappeared" by those trained at the SOA, renamed
the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The SOA/WHINSEC is
paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars, money for foreign military training that is
authorized by Congress each year.
Ten years ago Sevre-Duszynska, a former ESL teacher at Henry Clay High School,
spent three months (Sept. 10 - Dec. 6th, 2002) in the Federal Women's Work Camp
in Lexington for her nonviolent crossing the line onto the SOA military base on
Nov. 15, 2001. The civil disobedience is  considered a trespass which is a
misdemeanor. She was fired from her teaching job as she came out of prison and
was later reinstated after a public hearing granted by the Kentucky Commissioner
of Education. Over 300 Interfaith peace activists have spent more than 100 years
in federal prison to close the SOA/WHINSEC.