Pope’s claim on priestly celibacy gets Vatican snub
Print Edition
POPE Francis promised “solutions” to the issue of priestly celibacy in an interview yesterday that raised the possibility the Roman Catholic Church could eventually lift a ban on married priests, but was quickly refuted by the Vatican.
Interviewed by Italy’s La Repubblica daily, Francis also condemned child sex abuse as a “leprosy” in the Church and cited his aides as saying that “the level of pedophilia in the Church is at 2 percent”.
“That 2 percent includes priests and even bishops and cardinals,” he was quoted as saying.
Asked whether priests might one day be allowed to marry, Francis pointed out that celibacy was instituted “900 years after Our Lord’s death” and that clerics can marry in some Eastern Churches under Vatican tutelage.
“There definitely is a problem but it is not a major one. This needs time but there are solutions and I will find them,” Francis said, without giving further details.
But Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the quotations in the newspaper on the existence of pedophile cardinals and the possible reform of priestly celibacy did not correspond to what the pope actually said. “This is not at all an interview in the normal sense of the word,” he said, accusing the newspaper of “manipulating ingenuous readers”.
The interview was the third in a series with the 90-year-old founder of the La Repubblica, Eugenio Scalfari, a known atheist.
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