more than 240 peace activists have been tried and jailed for peacefully demonstrating at the gates of the SOA/WHINSEC. Excommunication The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a decree in May 2008 formally declaring that a woman who attempts to be ordained a Catholic priest, and the persons attempting to ordain her, are automatically excommunicated. Three months later Fr. Bourgeois was a celebrant in, and delivered the homily during the ordination of Janice Sevre-Duszynska under the auspices of the group Roman Catholic Womenpriests, which rejects the Church's teaching on the all-male priesthood. The ceremony was not recognized by the Vatican; and its May 2008 declaration meant that Bourgeois was excommunicated latae sententiae. Bourgeois received a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which explained what the letter called his "errors" along with "a genuine concern for his salvation." It gave him 30 days from October 21, 2008 to recant his "belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in our Church, or (he) will be excommunicated." Bourgeois refused; and so was excommunicated latae sententiae on November 24, 2008. For the next nearly four years Bourgeois continued to both act and be recognized as a priest, while he and Dominican Fr. Tom Doyle, a canon lawyer acting on Bourgeois' behalf, asked for discussions and negotiatations on the matter with the Maryknoll Society and, through it, the Holy See. At no time, during any of it, did Bourgeois recant his position on women's ordination to the priesthood. On May 22, 1994, Pope John Paul II released an apostolic letter, addressed to the Bishops of the Catholic Church, entitled "On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis)," which closes as follows: "Arguments against this clear and authoritative teaching," wrote Keith Fournier on Catholic Online, "sometimes come from people who do not understand that the priesthood is not a job and have succumbed to the 'rights' mentality of the current age. Other times they come from people who have no understanding of the sacramental nature of the Church. Both groups may include among them Catholics who, as in too many other areas of doctrine, have not been properly catechized." Holding that the Roman Catholic church has no authority to ordain women, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed the Church's ban on women priests at the Vatican's 2012 Holy Thursday chrism Mass. Maryknoll expulsion On March 18, 2011,