Empty Shoes In The Vatican: Jane Via's Journey to the Priesthood - Paperback

by Lisa K. Shapiro (Author)

How did a polite Protestant girl grow up to challenge the Catholic Church?

Jane Via knew by the age of ten that she was meant to be Catholic. By sixteen, she was attending two services every Sunday. First, she went to her family's Protestant church, and then she drove two towns away where no one knew her parents so she could attend the Catholic Mass. Finally, in college, she celebrated the Sacraments of Initiation into the Catholic Church. She went on to earn a PhD in theology, and taught religion at a prestigious Catholic university. She became an assistant district attorney and prosecuted high profile cases. But something was missing from her spiritual life.

Via was ordained as a Catholic deacon, and then as a priest. In 2005, she founded the first parish in the United States with a woman presiding at the altar. Church officials threatened her with excommunication, but she refused to back down. She believed in justice, and in a better way to be Roman Catholic.