Danube Seven

The Danube Seven are a group of seven women from Germany, Austria and the United States who were ordained as priests on a ship cruising the Danube river on 29 June 2002 by Rómulo Antonio Braschi, Ferdinand Regelsberger, and a third unknown bishop.

The seven women are: Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, Adelinde Theresia Roitinger, Gisela Forster, Iris Muller, Ida Raming, Pia Brunner and Angela White (the last a pseudonym for Dagmar Braun Celeste, the Austrian born former first lady of Ohio in the United States).

Braschi, an Independent Catholic bishop whose own ordination is in the line of apostolic succession and thus considered valid by the Roman Catholic Church, was excommunicated by the latter.

The women's ordinations were not, however, recognized as valid by the Roman Catholic Church, although the women (and their successors) consider their own ordinations to be valid and even studied in a three year program, designed by Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, prior to their ordinations.