http://news.nationalpost.com/
ROME — Pope Francis says he believes that Roman Catholic priests should be celibate but the rule was not an unchangeable dogma and “the door is always open” to change.
Francis made similar comments when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires but his remarks to reporters on a plane returning from a Middle East trip were the first he has made since becoming pope.
“Celibacy is not a dogma,” he said Monday in answer to a question about whether the Catholic Church could some day allow priests to marry as they can in some other Christian Churches.
“It is a rule of life that I appreciate very much and I think it is a gift for the Church but since it is not a dogma, the door is always open,” he said.
The Church teaches that a priest should dedicate himself totally to his vocation, essentially taking the Church as his spouse, in order to help fulfill its mission.
It is a rule of life that I appreciate very much and I think it is a gift for the Church but since it is not a dogma, the door is always open
However while priestly celibacy is a tradition going back around 1,000 years, it is not considered dogma, or an unchangeable piece of Church teaching.
There has been pressure for change, particularly in the wake of recent sexual abuse scandals with proponents of optional celibacy in the Church arguing that sexual frustrations could drive some priests to sexually abuse children.
But the Church has rejected this argument, saying that pedophilia, whether in the Church or outside of it, is carried out by people with psychological problems.
Priests are allowed to marry in the Anglican and other Protestant churches as well as in the Orthodox Church.
Pope Francis also said he plans to meet with a group of sex abuse victims next month at the Vatican as part of an effort to “go forward” with “zero tolerance” in confronting and preventing clergy abuse.
But the head of a U.S. victims’ group has dismissed the upcoming session as “another gesture, another public relations coup” that could prove meaningless.
The meeting with a half-dozen victims, announced on Monday, is being organized by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of the U.S. city Boston. It will mark the first such encounter for the pope, who has been criticized by victims for not expressing personal solidarity with them when he has reached out to other people who suffer.
“On this issue we must go forward, forward. Zero tolerance,” Francis said, calling abuse of children an “ugly” crime that betrays God. He said the meeting and a Mass at the Vatican hotel where he lives would take place early next month.
David Clohessy, executive director of the main U.S. victims’ group, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said the pope has shown himself to be capable of making real change in other areas such as church governance and finance but hasn’t done so in dealing with sex abuse by Catholic clergy.
“The simple truth is this is another gesture, another public relations coup, another nice bit of symbolism that will leave no child better off and bring no real reform to a continuing, scandal-ridden church hierarchy,” he said.
Clohessy said the meeting “is just utterly, utterly meaningless.”
With files from Associated Press
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Peterson Ssendi 
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