KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A woman is planning to defy the Roman Catholic Church and become a priest — the first to do so in Kansas City, Missouri.

The Kansas City Star reports that 67-year-old Georgia Walker knows that once she takes the step, she will be excommunicated from the church, but it doesn’t faze her because she doesn’t accept the legitimacy of the excommunication.
The church in turn will not accept her ordination, scheduled for Jan. 3. Under canon law, only men can be priests.

Walker is part of a movement called the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. Instead of leaving the church, they hope to change it from within. There are nearly 200 women priests, all but about 50 of them in the U.S.