Rev. Kori Pacyniak (STH’15) and the Women Priests Push for Changes in the Church
This article was originally published by the Bostonia, Boston University’s Alumni Magazine. The original post can be found here.
Growing up in a Polish neighborhood of Chicago, Kori Pacyniak was swaddled in Catholicism. Their family was devoutly Catholic. Friends in Girl Scouts and a Polish folk dancing group were Catholic. But Pacyniak’s love for the Church often felt unrequited, as when, at just eight, they told their grandmother, “I want to be a priest.”
“Only boys can be priests,” their grandmother responded. “Fine,” Pacyniak recalls saying, “when I grow up, I want to be a boy.”
Now 40, Pacyniak (STH’15) was ordained in 2020 as the first known transgender, nonbinary cleric in the Roman Catholic Women Priests—a revolution among revolutionaries. Women Priests is a global breakaway movement from the Church, with 200 clergy, mostly in the United States. Its priests are automatically excommunicated by the Vatican, which recognizes ordination for cisgender men only.
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