Italian Women Ask Pope to Drop Celibacy Rule

Posted on May 28, 2010

AP / Gerald Herbert

A group of Italian women has posted an open letter to the pope on an Internet forum, asking Benedict XVI to reconsider the Catholic Church’s celibacy requirement for clergy members, claiming that they have had close relationships, some of them sexual, with Catholic priests. They apparently aren’t holding their breath, however, in terms of expecting a response from the Vatican.  —KA

CNN:

The women decided to write the letter after hearing the pope restate the church’s position on celibacy in March, she said.

“We decided that it was (time) to make our reality known,” Salomone told CNN. “We wanted to tell everybody that we exist and that we are no longer willing to always be silent about it.”

The issue of priestly celibacy is not much debated in Italy, she said, but she said that’s precisely the problem.

A priest is “just a man like everyone else. This is a good thing. And he should not be deprived of his right to a relationship.”

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.