Female Ideas of Priesthood in France and Italy in the 19th and 20th centuries

Our paper points out the emergence, in France and Italy in the 19th and 20th centuries, of a number of female religious initiatives marked by a reparative sensitivity to the clergy's mistakes: for example, the devotion to "Vierge Pretre" by Marie Deluil Martiny, the devotion of the Victims adorers in Company of St. Angela Merici di Siena and the spirituality of Da Persico's Daughters. The purpose was visualized through the worship of the Virgin as Co-Redemptrix or through victims' practices to gain special intercessions for the clergy's behaviour. These phenomena can be read as a sign of the awareness of the impossibility for females to become priests.