PTI

London, May 31: The Vatican City has vowed to excommunicate women who attempt ordination and bishops who try to ordain them as Catholic priests from the Church.

The decree, which comes in the wake of several women attempting to be ordained as Catholic priests, makes the existing ban on fair sex priests more explicit by clarifying that excommunication would follow all such ordinations.

"Remaining firm on what has been established by canon 1378 of the Canon Law both he who has attempted to confer holy orders on a woman, and the woman who has attempted to receive the said sacrament incurs in latae sententiae excommunication, reserved to the Apostolic See," the decree said.

The general decree has been published in the Vatican newspaper 'L'Osservatore Romano'.

People excommunicated from the Catholic Church are forbidden from receiving the sacraments or sharing in acts of public worship.

According to the Vatican, the rules banning women from the priesthood cannot to altered because Jesus Christ chose only men as his Apostles -- catholic law states that only a baptised male can be made a priest, the British media reported on Friday.

But advocates of women's ordination said that Christ was only acting according to the social norms of his time. They cite the letters of Saint Paul, some of earliest texts of Christianity, to show that women played important roles in the early Church.