Dagmar Braun Celeste
Dagmar Ingrid Braun Celeste is an American counselor, and author. The former first lady of Ohio, she was married to former Ohio governor and U.S. ambassador Richard F. Celeste, whom she met while attending Oxford University in England. They have six grown children, and were divorced in 1995.
Celeste was born in Krems, Lower Austria, Nazi occupied Austria. She received a bachelor's degree in Women's Studies and Public Policy from Capital University in Ohio in 1982. In 1988, she was granted a master's in Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Ministry at the Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio.
Some notable achievements as first lady of Ohio included chairing the Ohio Recovery Council, spearheading the drive to establish the first state-sponsored on-site child care center and Employee Assistance Program in Ohio, initiating the Task Force on Family Violence, co-chairing the Governor's Commission on Volunteerism, and serving as co-chair of the Council on Holocaust Education. She was an Ohio delegate to the Democratic Convention in 1980. Since 1992, she has been active with the National Peace Institute, Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament, the Council for Ethics in Economics, and the Women's Community Fund in Cleveland.
Ordination
In 2002, Celeste announced that she had secretly been ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church under the pseudonym of "Angela White." She was one of seven women, the "Danube Seven," ordained by Argentinian independent Catholic bishop Rómulo Antonio Braschi on a boat on the Danube River, making her the first female American Roman Catholic to call herself a priest. Celeste was subsequently excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church, which does not recognize the validity of the ordination of women.
Other activities
Celeste serves as a life balance coach and the executive director of the Tyrian network, "an intentional learning community founded in 2000 on Kelleys Island, Ohio and dedicated to Brigid, both the Goddess and the Saint." She is the author of the auto-biographical book We Can Do Together: Impressions of a Recovering Feminist First Lady. She has also participated in productions of The Vagina Monologues, among others at a Unitarian Universalist Church in 2003.