'A Man May Love A Woman...': Senior Vatican Offical Backs Married Catholic Priesthood

A senior Vatican official has said that there is a need to seriously think about allowing Chatolic priests to marry.

Pope Francis, escorted by Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna (Behind Pope) sits aboard a ferry-boat leaving Valletta's port.

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A senior Vatican official, Archbishop Charles Scicluna has pressed for allowing Catholic priests to marry saying it was time the Roman Catholic Chruch seriously thought about the celibacy rule even as he acknowledged there was still a place for it in the Church as he backed the proposal for an option for priests to marry. 

"This is probably the first time I'm saying it publicly and it will sound heretical to some people," Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, also an advisor to Pope Francis, told the Times Of Malta.

"If it were up to me, I would revise the requirement that priests have to be celibate," he said, adding, "Experience has shown me that this is something we need to seriously think about."

Scicluna, who is well known for his investigations of sexual abuse crimes, said priests were allowed to marry earlier. He said, “It was optional for the first millennium of the Church’s existence and it should become optional again.” He added that marriage was allowed in Catholic Churches of the Oriental rite.

Suggesting the need to rethink priestly celibacy, he said many good priests were lost because they chose marriage. He said, "Why should we lose a young man who would have made a fine priest, just because he wanted to get married? And we did lose good priests just because they chose marriage.”

He said, "A man may mature, engage in relationships, 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.”

The debate over allowing Catholic priests to marry has been raging for ages and in 2021 the Pope dismissed a proposal to ordain elderly married men in remote areas in the Amazon. As the latest remarks by Scicluna once again paved the way for discussions, the opponents believe that celibacy allows priests to entirely dedicate themselves to the Church.