[1] The organization has played a major role in influencing the ordination of women and general human rights.
Jeffery and Kendall met while waiting outside Holloway Prison to welcome the release of imprisoned suffragettes,[6] a common practice for the WSPU in England at the time.
[7] Early members of the CWSS, in addition to Jeffery and Kendall, included Florence Barry, Beatrice Gadsby, Christine O’Connor, Smyth Pigott, Monica Whately, and Kathleen Fitzgerald, who was appointed first chairman of the Society.
The purpose of the Society was “to band together Catholics of both sexes, in order to secure the Parliamentary vote on the same terms as it is, or may be granted to men.
[7] The CWSS sought to promote and improve the perception of women's suffrage among Catholics in England.
For example, in December 1911, the CWSS wrote to prominent members of the Catholic clergy, including the Archbishop of Westminster, asking them to consider the social, moral, and religious importance of extending the right to vote to women.
Around eighty members of the CWSS participated in the procession, many representing Catholic societies and wearing religious medals and ribbons.
[4] The CWSS, like other suffrage organizations, adopted a stance on militancy, a controversial and divisive issue for many suffragists.
The CWSS's Annual Report in 1914 states, “it rests with us to see that the position of women is not worse after the war than it was before.”[5] Beginning in 1915, the CWSS created its own journal, the Catholic Suffragist, first edited by Leonora de Alberti, which openly promoted women's suffrage and equal rights.
[5][4] In 1918, the Representation of the People Act granted suffrage to British women over the age of thirty.
[5] Later that same year, the CWSS met with American and international suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, who stated, “practically the whole world had been won to suffrage with the exception of the Latin Catholic countries,” and encouraged the members to help Catholic women all over the world.
[2] At that time, the United Kingdom founding chapter was known as the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Section of the St Joan's International Alliance.
Since 1967, the organization has issued resolutions following women and human rights focused declarations by the Vatican.