The international organisation We are Church states that it is "committed to change the Church's official and theological approach to homosexual people".

"we are Church Knights, after all,' Sparhawk replied.

'We are Church Knights, Your Majesty,' he said in a flat, unemotional voice.

'We are Church Knights and must obey the commands of a member of the Hierocracy, no matter what his affiliation. '

'We are Church Knights, Your Magesty,' Bevier replied piously.

"Just because we are church ladies, they think they can push us around," a volunteer said to me once, after telling a client not to come back or she would call the police.

How influential the We Are Church coalition is among Catholics is not easily determined, because the groups that signed the statement vary considerably in size, from thousands of members to a handful.

Luigi De Paoli, one of the founders of We Are Church, the largest liberal church group in Europe, said his group had no cardinal inside the conclave representing its views.

We are Church (also known as Wir Sind Kirche) is a movement which advocates changing the structures of responsibility and authority of the Roman Catholic Church, especially in response to the scandal of pedophile priests.

Christian Weisner, spokesman for the German chapter of the liberal Catholic group We Are Church, called the encyclical "a sign of hope" that Benedict would prove to be a "human face for Christianity and for the Catholic Church."

"Many people aren't finding a home in the Catholic Church - because of the lack of a role for women, because of the lack of democracy," said Christian Weisner, spokesman for We Are Church in Germany, a liberal group.

Eventually I manage to convince Molly that we are Church of England, although this line of argument is not without its horrifying moments either, and the two of us cruise the neighbourhood in the car, looking for the right church putting on the right show at the right time.

"We Are Church," a network that represents 140 liberal Catholic groups in 27 countries, is bringing in theologians to promote an agenda that includes allowing women and married men to be priests, giving more power to local bishops and laity, and changing the church's attitudes toward sexuality.

Two of the most active groups, We Are Church and Future Church, said they had collected more than a million signatures asking the church to rethink issues like mandatory celibacy and the ban on women's serving as deacons, lay members who perform many functions of a priest.

"It is very irritating that they put the increased severity in punishment for abuse and women's ordination at the same level," said Christian Weisner, the spokesman for "We Are Church," a liberal Catholic reform movement founded in 1996 in response to a high-profile sexual abuse case in Austria.