Vatican reaffirms celibacy as requirement for priests

Vatican reaffirms celibacy as requirement for priests
By Frances d'Emilio
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune and The Associated Press
Published November 17, 2006

VATICAN CITY -- A summit led by Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed mandatory celibacy for priests Thursday, rebuffing a high-profile crusade by a married African archbishop who has been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.

In a statement after the three-hour meeting, the Vatican said: "The value of the choice of priestly celibacy, according to Catholic tradition, has been reaffirmed."

In announcing the summit earlier this week, the Vatican said it would examine "the situation created by the disobedience of Monsignor Emmanuel Milingo."

Milingo, of Zambia, 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 Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

As he steps up his campaign, Milingo is hoping hundreds of married priests will join him in celebrating mass in a hotel near Newark, N.J., in early December, said one of the married men he ordained, Rev. George Augustus Stallings Jr. of Washington.

The Vatican said summit participants were 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 Vatican's spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, said those "conditions" could refer to such situations as a married priest who is now a widower and wants to be readmitted to the exercise of his priestly functions.

The summit yielded "no change in the current discipline" of the church regarding celibacy, Lombardi said.

Rev. Joseph Fessio, provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., and editor of Ignatius Press, Benedict's U.S. publisher, said it was to be expected that the summit would reaffirm the celibacy requirement.

Asked whether the Vatican's use of the word "value" of celibacy instead of "requirement" in the statement meant a shift in its stance, Fessio said: "I think there is some ambiguity which is probably intended so that the church's position, which is firm and not going to change, will not appear to be simply an authoritarian response."

The Vatican requires celibacy of priests ordained under the Latin rite, although it has accepted married Anglican priests who converted to Catholicism.