“Soline . . . lays bare the profound suffering she has endured 
wanting to serve God . . . but being rebuffed, ignored, labelled, 
stereotyped, as if God only talks to clerics and like them has no 
time for women as equals. Who could believe in such a God?” 
– Mary McAleese, from the Foreword

As a student in Trinity College Dublin, Soline Humbert 
experienced a call to the priesthood in the Catholic 
Church, which she was unable to pursue because of the ban 
on women’s ordination. She found herself on a collision course 
with a powerful church hierarchy intent on quashing any such 
vocation, and was even warned of excommunication if she 
persisted.
In this ground-breaking memoir, Soline candidly shares her 
struggles, her dark nights of the soul and her ecstasies, as well 
as her decades-long effort to bring about an end to women’s 
exclusion from the priesthood. She is told again and again: 
‘The door to women’s ordination was shut and would remain 
shut.’ And that was that.
But as the Catholic Church continues its decline in weekly 
Mass attendance, its huge drop in male celibate priestly 
vocations and waning cultural significance, as it reels from 
decades of scandals due to child sexual abuse by clergy, it is 
becoming increasingly clear that the time for change is at hand.
A Divine Calling is an inspirational story of hope, courage, 
determination and one woman’s passionate desire to make a 
difference.