Bengaluru: “My country needs to apologise to the rest of the world for causing so much of pain and suffering. The United States (of America) sells the most number of guns and has caused the maximum amount of damage to the world. We need to call for peace.
Our President believes in peace, but his hands are tied,” said Rev. / Prof. Victoria Rue, a woman Catholic priest, playwright and theatre director and professor at San Jose State University in an exclusive interview with Deccan Chronicle.
Prof. Rue is in the city to deliver the ‘Kappen Memorial’ lecture on ‘Rehearsing Justice: Theatre, Sexuality and the Sacred,’ in which she will deliberate on cultural and religious taboos imposed on gender and sexuality.
A woman known to live life on her terms, Prof Rue combines in her the feisty spirit of a non-conformist yet an extremely compassionate, spiritual and creative person, who as a child had decided to become a priest in the Catholic Church and break the traditionally patriarchal religious order.
Her family, who believed that one must be the “most” of what one can be, encouraged her to follow her calling. She was ordained to priesthood in 2005 and believes that as a woman Catholic priest, her call is to “awaken” the women in the Catholic Church to their rights, the right to equity and leadership.
“Women comprise half of the Catholic Church but are not heard unlike the Protestant Church, where women have been ordained as priests and have been in leadership position for the last 50 years.
Pope Francis will soon have to hear the voices of women. Ever since his election in March 2013, the Pope has made clear his belief that the Church needs to become more inclusive and understanding of real people’s lives if it is to survive, let alone grow and I am glad to see this new energy, but we need all the male cardinals and bishops to know what they are missing out on by not listening to women’s voices.
There needs to be a balance between men and women in religion. Women will bring in a special vision,” she said. Prof Rue added that women should read scriptures wearing critical lenses on who wrote them, when they were written and what was the then culture.
As a theatre artist, Prof Rue believes that theatre is “empowerment to whoever does it. For me theatre is a place, where we can rehearse our dreams for ourselves, our community.
We can rehearse revolution in theatre,” she added, while calling people, especially women to come to theatre to “create a community of conscious workers to change the world”.
Regarding her alternate sexuality as lesbian, Prof. Rue said that she refuses to be in a closet and had come out in her early years. “I don’t want to be in a closet, as a priest, theatre person, professor. I integrate my whole self,” she said.
