There is still no official confirmation, but according to the newspaper El País, Pope Francis will not go ahead with the possibility of ordaining married men as a way of responding to the shortage of priests in the most remote regions of the world. The papal position, eagerly awaited since the bishops meeting in October at the Amazon synod launched this challenge, will be presented at 1pm Rome (noon in Portugal), at a press conference in the Vatican, but the correspondent of that Spanish newspaper in Rome, Daniel Verdú, advances since the apostolic exhortation entitled “Querida Amazónia” passes beside the controversial issue of the end of celibacy.
According to Verdú, Francisco will have met yesterday with several American bishops and they will have been the ones to advance with the information that the awaited document renounces that possibility, as well as that of advancing with the female diaconate, which had also been thrown on the table by a majority of votes at the synod dedicated to the Amazonbetween 6 and 27 October in Rome. With 118 votes in favor and 41 against, the bishops proposed, while recognizing priestly celibacy as “a gift” for the Church, the priestly ordination of married men, provided that they were “suitable and recognized by the community” and, being holders of “A fertile permanent diaconate”, receive adequate training for the priesthood, being able to have a legitimately constituted and stable family ”.
If this information is confirmed, which falls like a bucket of cold water among the many who, from within the Church, are calling for an end to mandatory celibacy, the exhortation “Dear Amazon” will focus on environmental, social issues and policies that oppress the people of a region that covers nine countries (Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Suriname, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Guyana and French Guiana ”, in a total of seven million square kilometers.
The Pope allegedly, in that conversation with the bishops, that he did not feel that the question was urgently raised, although he acknowledged that it is necessary to increase the range of functions and the preparation of the laity, in the sense that they can help to propagate the Catholic faith and its rituals, namely in the Amazon, where there are Catholics who see a priest only once a year, as the Italian daily also said La Stampa, citing one of those present at that meeting with Francis, the bishop of Santa Fé, John Charles Wester.
Francis will have admitted to reflecting on the lack of priests that affects several regions of the world where the Catholic Church wants to be present, but in the future. For now, and according to the Catholic News Service, the news agency owned by the American bishops’ conference, the celebration of the Mass will remain reserved for celibate priests.
Exhortation was ready in December
By refusing to lift a restriction in place for a thousand years, Francisco softened his grip on the all-powerful conservative sector of the Catholic Church, well rooted in the United States of America, but not only, and whose main leaders arrived to threaten to accuse him of heresy, which is tantamount to dropping a bomb on the Catholic world. One of the most recent episodes of this opposition to Francis’ reformist impetus occurred last month, when, at a time when this decision by Francis was awaited, Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and for the discipline of the Sacraments, tried to associate as co-author of your book From the Bottom of Our Hearts the name of the former Pope Benedict XVI – the work, it should be noted, arrives this Wednesday at the Portuguese newsstands, with the seal of the publisher Lucerna.
In a clear attempt to condition Francis, the 72-year-old Guinean cardinal seeks to establish an ontological-sacramental bond between the priesthood and celibacy and argues that any loosening of that bond will jeopardize previous pontificates. His attempt to recall Joseph Ratzinger’s name to the book was, however, unsuccessful, since he came to deny, through his private secretary, that he had written the book in four hands with the Guinean. In any case, and according to the La Stampa, this papal exhortation was completed in December, that is, before the controversy over the book broke out on the pages of newspapers around the world.
