Rev. Roy Bourgeois, the Catholic priest facing excommunication for his public support of the ordination of women, said he plans to visit the Vatican personally this week to lobby against the formal excommunication. Bourgeois, 70, is a Maryknoll priest and nationally known peace activist, and has been targeted by the Vatican for participating in a ceremony at a Unitarian Universalist church in Lexington, Ky. last August in which Janice Sevre-Duszynska, a member of a group called Roman Catholic Womenpriests, was ordained. The Vatican considers ceremonies for the ordination of a woman as a priest illicit and invalid.

According to the New York Times, Sevre-Duszynska is a veteran agitator for women's ordination, and the 35th American woman to claim ordination from the increasingly vocal Womenpriests group. The Womenpriests group has been holding its own ordinations of women as priests, deacons and even bishops across North America and Europe, often in secret, starting in 2002 with a ceremony on a boat on the Danube River, reports the New York Times.

Bourgeois, born in Lutcher, Louisiana, began his annual protests to close the School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Ga., an Army training school held responsible for human rights abuses in Latin America, in 1989. The institution was closed due to the protests, and in its place, the Pentagon opened the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation in 2001. The protests are still held annually at the gates of Fort Benning, drawing more than 15,000 protesters last year. This week, from November 21-23, will be the 19th annual vigil to close the SOA. The deadline for Bourgeois' excommunication is also Nov. 21, reports the Associated Press.

Even if Bourgeois is excommunicated, he will remain active in SOA Watch and the church, Bourgeois told the AP. "I won't be able to say Mass in Catholic churches, but my ministry in SOA Watch and speaking at colleges and churches will continue," he said.