Ex-bishop's widow wants optional priestly celibacy
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — She uses a wheelchair, but Clelia Luro, 87, feels powerful enough to continue her campaign to end priestly celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church.
This woman, whose romance and eventual marriage to a former bishop became a major scandal in the 1960s, is such a close friend of Pope Francis that she says he called her every Sunday when he was a cardinal in Argentina.
Luro’s convinced that Pope Francis 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. “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 Rev. 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.
In his book “On Heaven and Earth,” published last year, Bergoglio said: “For the moment I’m in favor 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.
In the Eastern Rite Catholic Church, seminarians who are 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.
Luro and her husband, the former bishop of Avellaneda, Jeronimo Podesta, says Bergoglio didn’t hesitate to minister to them when Podesta was hospitalized 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 topics in private conversations.
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.
Celibacy is not dogma — a law of divine origin — but rather a tradition of the Roman Catholic church.
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.
