10,000 Priests Ask Rome For Release

Press, Issue 30997, 1 March 1966, Page 17

10,000 Priests Ask Rome For Release

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) ROME, February 28. About 10,000 Roman Catholic priests over the last 10 years, had asked the Vatican for release from their vows, sources said yesterday, the Associated Press reported.

Celibacy problems were behind most of the requests sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,, formerly the Vatican’s Holy Office, the sources said. Many men who had already left the priesthood, taken a wife in civil marriage and wanted later to return to good spiritual standing in the

church as married men dispensed from their solemn priestly promises. A variety of motives prompted other requests, including drinking problems and intellectual crises with a loss of vocation.

Roman Catholicism over the last decade had had 420,000 new priests. That means one priest in 42 has sought to leave the priesthood since 1956 and still remain a valid Roman Catholic.

The number who left and completely turned their backs on the church, without ever trying to get release from vows, is unknown but believed to be another several thousand.

Bishops Instructed The sources, commenting on a published report about the number of requests reaching Rome, said the Vatican recently sent a private instruction concerning such requests to ail bishops. The new guidelines grant bishops greater discretion in judging merits of cases, sources said. The Vatican Ecumenical Council, in its decree last fall on the priestly life, reaffirmed celibacy as beneficial to the priesthood although “not demanded by the very nature of the priesthood.” Celibacy became obligatory in the West in the fifth century reign of Pope Leo the Great.