Vatican reaffirms value of celibacy for priests at summit

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican on Thursday reaffirmed the value of celibacy for priests after a summit led by Pope Benedict XVI that was spurred by a married African archbishop who has been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.

The three-hour meeting's conclusions "were not a change in how the present rules [on celibacy] are applied," the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said by telephone.

The summit yielded "no change in the current discipline" of the church on the celibacy requirement, he said.

"The value of the choice of priestly celibacy, according to Cath¿olic tradition, has been reaffirmed, and the need for solid human and Christian training, for seminarians as well as already ordained priests, has been reiterated," the Vatican said in a brief statement summing up the meeting of top prelates for "joint reflection" with the pope.

The statement did not cite any figures, but there are estimated to be at least 100,000 married priests worldwide, with about 25,000 of them in the United States.

"The participants at the reunion were carefully briefed on the requests to receive dispensation from the obligation of celibacy that have been made in recent years and on the possibility of being readmitted to the exercise of the ministry of priests who now meet the conditions required by the church," the statement said.

Lombardi said that those "conditions" could refer to such situations, say, of a married priest who is now a widower and wants to be readmitted to the exercise of his priestly functions.

He said the individual requests that were covered in the summit will now likely be examined by the relevant Vatican offices.

Proponents of easing the celibacy requirement for priests in the Latin rite church say such a move could help ease the shortage of clergy in many parts of the world.

Earlier in the week, the Vatican insisted the policy on celibacy was not open for discussion, but that the meeting was called to examine the implications of the "disobedience" by Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. The statement did not mention Milingo.

Milingo incurred automatic excommunication in September when he ordained four married American men as bishops in defiance of the Vatican. He already had drawn the Vatican's ire in 2001, when he took a South Korean woman as his wife in a group wedding ceremony of the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

In his campaign to have the church to drop the celibacy requirement, Milingo hopes to draw some 1,000 married Catholic priests to a gathering Dec. 8 through 10 in the New York City area.

A Vatican meeting of bishops from around the world last year rejected suggestions that the celibacy requirement be dropped for priests.

Stuart O'Brien, a board member of the Massachusetts-based Corpus, an organization of married priests, said he did not expect any changes to come out of the Vatican summit on Thursday, even though "Milingo has their attention."

Referring to an estimated 25,000 men who left the active priesthood in the United States to marry, O'Brien said in a telephone interview from the United States: "I don't think that Rome will ever open the door to them."

Louise Haggett, head of the advocacy group Celibacy is the Issue, contended that priests seeking dispensations decades ago "usually received it within a year," but since the 1978-2005 papacy of John Paul II, the waiting time has stretched to years.

"There are a lot of priests today who don't even bother to put in a request," Haggett said by phone from Maine.

When Milingo was excommunicated, several Vatican watchers said the Holy See was worried about the possibility that the archbishop, with the power to ordain bishops and priests, could start a schism.

The Vatican requires celibacy of priests ordained under the Latin rite, although married men can become priests in the Eastern rite. The Vatican has also accepted some married Anglican priests who came over to the Catholic fold.

"What I think will eventually happen is that they (the Vatican hierarchy) will change, and they will allow (married) men of virtue to be ordained, older men, maybe deacons, who have proven themselves in parish work," O'Brien said.

Several bishops at the Vatican gathering last year raised the possibility that married men of proven virtue, known in Latin as "viri probati," could be ordained, but that idea was ruled out.