Pope Benedict XVI presides at Vatican summit on celibacy
(16 Nov. 2006) : Pope Benedict XVI met 20 heads of Vatican decastries on Thursday
to discuss the status of celibacy among Roman Catholic clergy and requests by married
priests who want to return to the active ministry. The meeting was called to debate
a Vatican strategy to deal with a renegade African archbishop who has founded a movement
of men who left the active ministry to wed and want to return as married men. The
unprecedented gathering comes some two months after Archbishop Emanuel Milingo, a
former Vatican official, raised the spectre of a modern schism when he ordained four
married men as priests in Washington D.C. Thereafter, he merited automatic excommunication
from the Catholic Church. The Vatican officials and the Pontiff discussed on Thursday
requests by priests for dispensation from the obligation of celibacy and on requests
for readmission to the priestly ministry by priests who had married. According to
Church law, a man who is allowed to leave the priesthood, under a procedure known
as a laicisation, must receive a separate dispensation from the vow of celibacy from
the Pope. Many men, however, have married without this dispensation and want to regularise
their position in the Church. Vatican officials have said no major decisions are expected
to come immediately from the meeting, which one called "a study of the situation"
that arose after Milingo's "disobedience".