The Catholic Church has repeatedly affirmed that “the door has shut” on women’s ordination. In A Divine Calling, Soline Humbert stands outside that door and knocks, simply and firmly insisting that she, too, has heard Christ calling her to the priesthood.
The Catholic Church denies that women have priestly vocations. But while Humbert mentions counterarguments of dissenting Catholic theologians, A Divine Calling is not a theological treatise. It is a spiritual autobiography, telling the story of a life infused with a sense of divine mission.
Humbert, a native of France, felt called in 1974 while studying at Trinity College: “It just seems to have slowly emerged, like a rock under water becoming visible at low tide.” Humbert believed that if she was hearing God’s voice, the hierarchy would hear it too.
Humbert met church leaders to share her good news, only to be informed that she was mistaken. After media appearances, she was harassed by hostile strangers. Some of the most compelling passages in A Divine Calling are her descriptions of dark nights of the soul. Even more powerful are her encounters with people who affirm her vocation; in them Humbert also hears the voice of Christ.
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Rev Ruth Patterson, the first woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in 1976, has said when she was discussing her vocation with her father – also a Presbyterian minister – he “painted the darkest picture of what ministry would be like” for a woman. Humbert’s father told her much the same: “you are going to suffer very much.”
Anne Francis’s 2022 study on women in ministry in Ireland, which included Humbert, found that other Catholic women had once felt called to ordination. But they had abandoned their calls due to what they described as a misogynistic “church culture”. These women may be missed: the Irish Catholic Church’s 2022 Synod on Synodality survey revealed widespread support for women’s ordination.
It is often said that the Catholic Church is not a democracy. And while there is no indication it will embrace women’s ordination, Humbert still sees her book as a meaningful contribution to Ireland’s National Synodal Assembly, scheduled for October 2026. She offers it as a personal testimony “that what comes from the spirit cannot be stopped”.
Gladys Ganiel is professor in the sociology of religion at Queen’s University Belfast
