Priests should be allowed to get married, says top Vatican official

The Roman Catholic Church should allow priests to get married, one of its top officials has said.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna, who leads Malta’s Catholic Church as well the Vatican body that investigates sex abuse allegations made about priests, said the church was losing people because of its strict celibacy rules.

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“If it were up to me, I would revise the rules requiring a priest to be celibate,” Scicluna told Times of Malta newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

“Why should we lose a young man who would have made a fine priest, just because he wanted to get married?”

“A man may … love a woman. As it stands, he must choose between her and priesthood, and some priests cope with that by secretly engaging in sentimental relationships,” he said.

Since 2018, Scicluna has served as Adjunct Secretary of the Holy See’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. In that role, he is responsible for investigating allegations of clerical sex abuse on minors around the world.

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But he acknowledged that not everyone in the Vatican was receptive to the idea when he suggested it internally.

“I speak openly about it in Rome, but the decision does not rest with me,” he said.

In 2019 the Synod of Bishops – an advisory body of the Church – voted to allow priests in remote areas of the Amazon rainforest to marry. However, that recommendation was not adopted into Catholic doctrine by the Pope.