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Vatican City — Pope Francis promised “solutions” to the issue of priestly celibacy in an interview yesterday that raised the possibility the Catholic Church could eventually lift the interdiction on married priests.Speaking to Italy’s La Repubblica daily, Francis also condemned child sex abuse as a “leprosy” in the Church and cited his aides as saying that “the level of paedophilia in the Church is at two percent”.
“That two percent includes priests and even bishops and cardinals,” he said.
Asked whether priests might one day be allowed to marry, Francis pointed out that celibacy was instituted “900 years after Our Lord’s death” and that clerics can marry in some churches under Vatican tutelage.
“There definitely is a problem but it is not a major one. This needs time but there are solutions and I will find them,” Francis said, without giving further details.
The interview was the third in a series with the 90-year-old founder of the La Repubblica daily, Eugenio Scalfari, a famous journalist and known atheist.
Meanwhile, the Pope holds his first meeting with victims of sexual abuse by priests today, an encounter that some say should have happened long ago, and victims from his native Argentina say they are pained over their exclusion.
Six victims, two each from Ireland, Britain and Germany, will attend the pope’s private morning Mass in his Vatican residence and then meet him afterwards, according to people who organised the meeting. — AFP
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter