2013-04-22 21:54
Clelia Luro (Picture: AP)
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Buenos Aires - She uses a wheelchair and carries the
weight of her 87 years, but Clelia Luro feels powerful enough to make the Roman
Catholic Church pay attention to her campaign to end priestly celibacy.
This woman, whose romance with a bishop and eventual
marriage became a major scandal in the 1960s, is such a close friend with Pope
Francis that he called her every Sunday when he was Argentina's leading
cardinal.
Luro's convinced that he will eventually lead the global
church to end mandatory priestly celibacy, a requirement she says "the
world no longer understands�.
She believes this could resolve a global shortage of
priests, and persuade many Catholics who are no longer practicing to recommit
themselves to the church.
"I think that in time priestly celibacy will become
optional," Luro said in an interview with AP in her home in Buenos Aires,
after sending an open letter to the pope stating her case. "I'm sure that
Francis will suggest it."
John Paul II, Benedict XVI and other popes before them
forbade any open discussion of changing the celibacy rule, and Francis hasn't
mentioned the topic since becoming pope last month.
"I don't see how in any way this would form part of
his agenda," said the Reverend Robert Gahl, an Opus Dei moral theologian
at the Pontifical Holy Cross University in Rome.
But as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he referred to the
issue of celibacy in ways that have inspired advocates to think that the time
for a change has come.
Discipline vs faith
In his book On Heaven and Earth, published
last year, Bergoglio said: "For the moment I'm in favour of maintaining
celibacy, with its pros and cons, because there have been 10 centuries of good
experiences rather than failures." But he also noted that "it's a
question of discipline, not of faith. It could change," and said the Eastern
Rite Catholic Church, which makes celibacy optional, has good priests as well.
"In the hypothetical case that the church decides to
revise this rule... it would be for a cultural reason, as with the case of the
Eastern church, where they ordain married men," he said in "Pope
Francis. Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio," re-published last month by
his authorised biographers, Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti.
Luro and her husband, the former bishop of Avellaneda,
Jeronimo Podesta, felt ostracised from the church for many years, but she says
Bergoglio didn't hesitate to minister to them when Podesta was hospitalised
before his death in 2000.
They became such good friends thereafter that Luro said
Bergoglio called her every Sunday for 12 years, and often discussed the
celibacy issue as they debated all sorts of hot topics in private
conversations.
Expanding the church
Luro now feels that the cardinals' election of a Jesuit
and Vatican outsider who is committed to expanding the global church and
reaffirming its commitment to the poor shows their willingness to undertake
profound changes to stem an exodus of the faithful.
The Reverend Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and Vatican
analyst at Georgetown University, said a first step might be for Francis to
simply signal that it's OK to debate the issue.
"The Vatican led by John Paul and Benedict said that
certain topics were just off the table, and any bishop who discussed them would
be in trouble. And theologians who wrote about them would get into trouble. So
this is part of a bigger question of how much open discussion Pope Francis is
going to allow in the church," Reese said.
"This would be exactly the kind of open discussion
that the Vatican does not like," Reese added. "Their attitude is that
you shouldn't confuse the children by having the parents argue."
Canon 277 of the Vatican's legal code reads:
"Clerics are obliged to observe perfect and perpetual continence for the
sake of the kingdom of heaven and are, therefore, bound to celibacy. Celibacy
is a special gift of God by which sacred ministers can more easily remain close
to Christ with an undivided heart, and can dedicate themselves more freely to
the service of God and their neighbour."
Still, celibacy is not dogma - a law of divine origin -
but a tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. Dogma cannot change, but
traditions can.
"We're very enthusiastic and hopeful that Francis
could reverse this canonic measure," said Guillermo Schefer, a former
priest who along with his wife, Natalia Bertoldi, are vice presidents of the
Latin-American Federation of Married Priests. "It's important that the
priests can also opt for a life of marriage and family. It would help them
integrate more with the people."
Married priests
In the Eastern Rite Catholic Church, seminarians who are
already married can be ordained later as priests.
Some married Anglican priests also have been allowed to
convert to Roman Catholicism, and some widowers with families have become
priests later.
But as Gahl notes, no Roman Catholic tradition allows men
who have already "married the church" to later marry a wife.
This would create a divided heart, a weakened commitment,
and go against much of what Francis has said since becoming pope about the need
for priests to deny themselves earthly pleasures as they spread the Gospel, he
said.
"He's been preaching this pretty much every
morning" at the Vatican, Gahl said. Advocates for optional celibacy are
"saying priesthood is too hard; why don't we make it easier? But what the
pope is saying is, ‘If you make this sacrifice, it would bring you pure joy’."
Those resisting change say celibacy has other benefits,
not least among them financial: Imagine if the world's 400 000 Roman Catholic
priests all had families, presumably large ones given the church's ban on
contraception. Suddenly, relatively meagre priestly salaries would have to
increase exponentially.
Choosing to wed
Still, tens of thousands of priests have left their
ministries to marry, and many others, particularly in Africa and Latin America,
have remained while having relationships with women and children on the side.
Bergoglio condemns that practice in his books.
"What I won't permit is the double life," he
said. "If he can't carry on his ministry, I tell him to stay home, that we
seek a papal dispensation, and that way he can receive the sacrament of
marriage."
Benedict reaffirmed mandatory celibacy in response to a
high-profile crusade by a married African archbishop who was excommunicated
after defying the Vatican and ordaining four married men as bishops.
Bergoglio's great friend Cardinal Claudio Hummes of
Brazil got into hot water when he noted that priestly celibacy is not a matter
of divine law during a 2006 newspaper interview he gave before arriving in Rome
to take over the Vatican's office for the world's priests. It sparked such
speculation about a potential change that Hummes had to issue a lengthy
statement reaffirming celibacy.
Luro was 39, separated and with six children when she met
Podesta, then 45, in 1966.
He was already a bishop, and very committed to social
causes, advocating liberation theology as part of the Movement of Third World
Priests.
"I was the first woman for Jeronimo," she
recalls. Far from hiding it, they made their relationship public and launched a
campaign for optional celibacy that took them to the Vatican's doors. Shortly
thereafter, Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical "Sacerdotalis
Caelibatus" in 1967, ratifying priestly vows of perpetual celibacy.
Luro said Bergoglio's Sunday phone calls were a huge
support for her. "We would speak of the church, we debated. I sent him
Jeronimo's writings."
And after becoming Francis, he called her again, she
said. Out of respect for the pope, she won't say what he told her.
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