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	Pope Denies Vatican Seeks to End Priestly Celibacy in 50 Years By Flavia Krause-jackson Business Week March 12, 2010 http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-12/pope-denies-vatican-seeks-to-end-priestly-celibacy-in-50-years.html March 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Vatican denied it’s secretly planning to scrap the rule of priestly celibacy in 50 years. Celibacy remains a “sacred” value for Catholic priests, Pope Benedict XVI said today during his Wednesday morning general audience. A Vatican spokesman confirmed his comments. The Catholic Church is studying ways to loosen the centuries-old requirement that priests abstain from sex in an effort to rebuild its image in the wake of pedophile scandals, Rome-based la Repubblica reported today. Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, who once said “celibacy is not a dogma,” is in charge of the project as head the congregation of the clergy, according to the report. Benedict is struggling to contain damage to the Catholic Church’s reputation from European sex-abuse scandals that began in Ireland and have spread to his German homeland. On Feb. 16, he called repeated instances of sexual abuse a “heinous crime” after summoning Irish bishops to Rome. The celibacy rule could be linked to reported cases of molestation and rape of children by priests, Austrian Archbishop Christoph Schonborn wrote in his diocese’s in-house magazine this week. He said “the issue of priests’ training” should be part of an “unflinching examination” of the scandals. Hummes, one of the Vatican’s more progressive voices, has tackled the thorny subject of celibacy before. In 2006, he told O Estado de Sao Paolo, a Brazilian newspaper, that the Vatican “may revise this question.” He also said that “most of the apostles were married.” The 12 apostles were men picked out by Jesus Christ to be his inner circle of disciples. Benedict, less than a year into his papacy in 2006, summoned his highest officials to re-examine the case for allowing priests to get married. His conclusion was to reiterate that celibacy remain a condition for men joining the church. --Editors: Jeffrey Donovan, Jennifer Freedman To contact the reporter on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in Rome at fjackson@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net
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