PINK SMOKE SIGNALS IN ROME CALL FOR WOMEN PRIESTS

Excluded from the conclave to elect a new pope on Wednesday — and more broadly from the Church's entire global priesthood — some Catholic women were determined that their voices will be heard.

- STORY: DAVE CLARK

In a park on a hill overlooking the dome of St Peter's and the church's Vatican headquarters, campaigners released pink smoke from flares, and demanded that women be allowed to seek ordination.

"We are saying to the cardinals, you cannot keep ignoring 50% of the Catholic population, you cannot go into a locked room and discuss the future of the Church without half of the Church," said Miriam Duignan.

"Whoever they elect needs to be brave enough to properly tackle the question of women’s inclusion, because so far it has not been, even by Pope Francis," said Duignan, of the Wijngaards Institute in Cambridge.

Duignan was briefly detained in 2011 after she attempted to enter the Vatican to deliver a petition in support of a priest backing the activists’ cause.

Had the activists taken their Wednesday protest — a nod to the black and white smoke used by the Holy See to announce voting results — to the Vatican, they believe a similar fate would have awaited them.